(KYIV, UKRAINE) — Ukraine’s parliament has passed a resolution affirming the legitimacy of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as president and confirming that elections are not possible until after the war ends.
The resolution is a rebuff to U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who have both suggested Zelenskyy is illegitimate because he has not held elections during the war with Russia.
Zelenskyy said on Sunday he would step down if it meant peace for his country, adding he would also do so if it meant Ukraine would be granted NATO membership.
The parliament noted on Tuesday that Zelenskyy was elected in legitimate elections and his mandate is not in doubt. It also said that no elections can be held until the lifting of martial law after the coming of a “just and lasting peace.”
Zelenskyy was elected in a landslide in 2019, but his term expired last May. Ukraine is under martial law which under its constitution forbids the holding of elections.
Most Ukrainians, including major opposition parties, agree that holding credible elections now amidst the war is not possible because millions are abroad as refugees, hundreds of thousands are fighting.
An election could also be an opportunity for Russia to divide the country while it is trying to defend itself.
Members of parliament passed the resolution on Tuesday in a second attempt, after an initial vote on Monday failed to achieve sufficient support.
Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament representing Zelenskyy’s party, told ABC News that Monday’s vote failed because too few of the president’s faction were present.
“It was Monday, when many members of parliament hadn’t come from their districts yet,” he said. By Tuesday, enough MPs were in attendance for the vote to pass comfortably.
ABC News’ David Brennan contributed to this report.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — French President Emmanuel Macron used his visit to the U.S. to publicly push back on President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on Ukraine, fact-checking his American counterpart in real-time and urging caution in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
During their joint Oval Office appearance on Monday, Macron interrupted Trump when the latter said that Europe was being paid back 60% of the aid it contributed to Kyiv over the last three years of war.
Touching Trump’s arm to interject, Macron said, “No, in fact, to be frank, we paid. We paid 60% of the total effort: it was through, like the U.S., loans, guarantees, grants,” Macron said. “And we provided real money, to be clear.”
After Macron’s comments, Trump smiled and replied, “If you believe that, it’s okay with me.”
In a Fox News interview that also aired on Monday, Macron warned Trump to “be careful” in the nascent U.S.-Russia talks intended to end Moscow’s 3-year-old war, without the direct involvement of Ukraine or European allies.
“I think the arrival of President Trump is a game-changer,” Macron said. “And I think he has the deterrence capacity of the U.S. to reengage with Russia.”
“We want peace,” the French president continued. “And I think the initiative of President Trump is a very positive one. But my message was to say be careful because we need something substantial for Ukraine.”
Trump’s repeated demands that Kyiv repay U.S. aid given since the beginning of Russia’s invasion have strained American ties with Ukraine and with its European allies.
The White House has framed its proposed deal to secure access to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Ukrainian resources as part of Trump’s push to recoup American wartime investment. Ukrainian officials said Monday that the deal is close to being finalized.
Trump said Monday he will soon meet with Zelenskyy, signaling the U.S. and Ukraine were “close” to a deal giving the U.S. access to profits from Ukraine’s valuable mineral resources and that Zelenskyy would come to Washington to sign it.
“I will be meeting with President Zelenskyy. In fact, he may come this week or next week to sign the agreement,” Trump said.
The president continued to focus on what he considers Ukraine’s unfair approach to U.S. and American aid during Russia’s war.
Trump again falsely claimed the U.S. has given Ukraine $350 billion during this period — a figure publicly disputed by Zelenskyy. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimates that the U.S. has committed about $119 billion. The majority — $67 billion — was in the form of military equipment.
The institute says that European nations — meaning the European Union, the U.K., Iceland, Norway and Switzerland — have collectively contributed around $138 billion to Ukraine, $65 billion of which was military equipment.
ABC News’ Alexandra Hutzler and Ellie Kaufman contributed to this report.
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(LONDON) — NATO ally Poland scrambled “military aviation” in its airspace early Tuesday morning in response to Russian missile strikes in western Ukraine, the country’s Operational Command said.
“Due to the activity of long-range aviation of the Russian Federation carrying out strikes on objects located, among others, in western Ukraine, military aviation has begun operating in Polish airspace,” the command said in a statement posted to X.
The operational commander “activated all available forces and resources at his disposal, and ground-based air defence and radar reconnaissance systems reached a state of readiness,” the statement added.
“The steps taken are aimed at ensuring safety in areas bordering the threatened areas,” the command said. “The Operational Command of the Armed Forces is monitoring the current situation, and its subordinate forces and resources remain in full readiness for immediate response.”
The command said that its forces were stood down after around four hours, with “no violation of the airspace of the Republic of Poland” observed.
The Polish military, it added, “is constantly monitoring the situation in the territory of Ukraine and remains in constant readiness to ensure the security of Polish airspace.”
Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 213 drones and seven missiles into Ukraine. Six missiles and 133 drones were shot down, the air force said on Telegram.
All of western Ukraine — and much of the rest of the country — was placed under air raid alerts in the early hours of Tuesday. Nightly Russian drone, and often also missile, attacks have become the norm in Ukraine as the country begins a fourth year of its defensive war.
This weekend, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement to social media, “Every day, our people stand against aerial terror.”
On Saturday night, Russia launched its largest-ever drone strike, firing 267 UAVs into Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian air force.
Russian and Ukrainian projectiles have at times crossed into Polish and other NATO national airspace. In 2022, two people were killed in eastern Poland by what the Polish Prosecutor’s Office said was a Ukrainian S-300 air defense missile that went off course during a Russian attack.
In at least two other instances, Warsaw has alleged that Russian cruise missiles briefly violated Polish airspace on their way to targets inside Ukraine. Poland summoned the Russian charge d’affaires to demand an explanation after one such incident in December 2023.
NATO allies Romania and Latvia have also reported airspace violations by Russian drones during Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
Soldiers from 1st Battalion 4th Infantry Skynet team walking through the area of operations during Combined Resolve 25-1at Hohenfels Training Area on Feb. 5, 2025. (U.S. Army Reserve Photo by Spc. Airam B. I Amaro-Millan)
(WASHINGTON) — Nearly three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. troops in Eastern Europe are using the lessons learned on the battlefields in Ukraine to modernize the Army’s tactics and use of new technologies or what the U.S. Army calls Transformation in Contact.
Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, thousands of U.S. military forces were sent to Eastern Europe to reassure NATO countries in the region and to deter Russia from expanding the conflict beyond Ukraine’s borders.
What started as a short-duration deployment has now grown to a current level of 23,000 U.S. Army troops maintained by a constant rotation of units on nine-month deployments.
“I have responsibility for (U.S. Army) forces from Estonia, U.S. forces that are stationed in Estonia all the way down to Bulgaria, 23 different foreign operating sites to assure our NATO partners and allies, but more importantly, to deter future Russian aggression.,” Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, the commander of the U.S. Army’s Fifth Corps, told ABC News in an interview. “It’s just a critical time to be here right now.”
The deployment of those U.S. Army forces so close to Ukraine also means that they are able to apply what they are seeing on the country’s battlefields and how to apply it to their own operations.
“There’s not a better place to learn from the conflict in Ukraine than Eastern Europe,” said Costanza. “Our NATO partners are helping with training and equipping the Ukrainians. So we got a direct inject of all those lessons learned that are coming out of Ukraine.”
Those lessons learned include the revolutionary use of small commercially available drones to drop bombs on Russian targets, the development of long-range one-way attack drones, and techniques to evade electronic warfare detection that can be used to target forces on the frontlines by tracking radios and other communications gear.
“The speed of innovation on the SUAS and the counter-SUAS capability is incredible,” said Costanza, using the military acronym for Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems used to describe small drones.
“The Ukrainians will develop a new capability for those SUAS, the very next day, the Russians will figure out how to counter that which causes the Ukrainians to have to innovate and adapt very quickly and figure out something else,” he said.
In early February, U.S. Army forces trained for two weeks with other NATO countries in Germany in Combined Resolve, an exercise that is part of the Army’s Transformation in Combat, which uses some of the Army’s new gear and allows soldiers to innovate just like what is happening in Ukraine.
“When they’re in Combined Resolve fighting the opposing force, they’re going to figure out how to make stuff work and innovate while they’re in contact,” said Costanza. “I think the Transformation in Contact effort is just going to speed up how we equip our soldiers now quickly, and how we organize maybe a bit differently.”
For example, soldiers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, a unit permanently stationed in Germany, used 3-D printers to make sensors provided to soldiers that Costanza said could detect drones.
They also used a novel way of communicating by using commercially available technology provided to them to facilitate their radio communications with the Polish forces they were training with who did not speak English.
“To the point where you can pick up a radio and talk to somebody in a Polish unit, and it actually translates what you say into Polish so when it comes out on the Polish radio, the Polish soldier hears it, understands it, and to respond back, and you hear his response in English,” said Costanza.
He praised the ingenuity of young soldiers who “figure out how to make all this work, and bang, you have something that bridges a gap.”
Transformation in Contact is also changing how the Army arranges itself on the battlefield as the U.S. Army shifts away from the large field headquarters seen in Iraq and Afghanistan towards smaller dispersed units that can do the same thing.
The war in Ukraine has shown that large headquarters can be destroyed with missiles because the high levels of electronic signals they emit can be detected by electronic warfare tools.
“Now it’s individual vehicles that are spread out all over the battlefield, much from the electromagnetics spectrum standpoint, the signature is so much smaller, and it’s just harder to figure out what’s a command post and what might just be an individual vehicle,” said Costanza.
“They can actually work distributed like that to have that same common operational picture of what’s going on and to be able to synchronize everything they need to do to win the fight, but without physically being together,” he added.
Also used in the exercise was the Army’s new lightweight all-terrain vehicle, the Infantry Squad Vehicle which can transport as many as nine soldiers on the battlefield.
“You get nine guys on there and all their kit and you can quickly move now and reposition forces in a way that infantry brigades haven’t been able to do in the past. And so it just gives you a lot more capability,” said Costanza.
As the rotation of U.S. Army units in Eastern Europe continues, some of them will have already gone through previous versions of Transformation in Contact exercises carried out in the United States.
Costanza said those units will bring their lessons learned from those exercises and will also innovate with new concepts much as the units they are replacing have been doing during their deployment.
“So, we’re just going to keep learning as we keep fielding this stuff out, and just continuing to get better on how we organize ourselves and how we equip ourselves,” said Costanza.
(ROME and LONDON) — Pope Francis’ “critical clinical condition” has shown a “slight improvement,” the Vatican said on Monday, as the 88-year-old pontiff remains hospitalized following a pneumonia diagnosis.
“In view of the complexity of the clinical picture, the doctors are still cautious about the prognosis,” the Vatican press office said in a statement.
The office said there were “no episodes of asthmatic respiratory crisis” on Monday, and some laboratory tests “have improved.”
“Oxygen therapy continues, albeit with slightly reduced flows and oxygen percentage,” the office said.
Francis was “resting” on Monday morning after spending his 10th night in the hospital, the Vatican press office said earlier in the day. He resumed some work activities Monday afternoon, the office said.
The pope has been eating normally, is awake and is continuing his medical therapies, Vatican sources told ABC News. He’s also in good humor and isn’t suffering from pain, the sources said.
“Pope Francis thanks all the people of God who have gathered in these days to pray for his health,” the Vatican said.
Francis has been hospitalized at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital since Feb. 14 following a bout with bronchitis.
The pontiff, who has led the Catholic Church since 2013, underwent another round of clinical tests on Sunday morning, Vatican sources told ABC News.
Officials said Sunday he remained in critical condition.
The pontiff was diagnosed with pneumonia on Tuesday, according to the Vatican.
A rosary will be said in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Monday, led by Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin. That rosary is seen as a way for the church to express its “closeness to the Pope and the sick,” said the director of the Vatican press office, Matteo Bruni.
President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron wished the pope well during remarks from the White House on Monday.
“We wish him well, we want him to get well,” Trump said when asked about the leaders’ message to the pope. “It’s a very serious situation, but we do want him to get well, if it’s possible.”
“We do think about the pope and we wish him recovery and a prompt recovery,” Macron added.
Ukrainians have suffered a decline in physical and mental health with a need for mental health care, trauma care and rehabilitation, according to the global health agency.
Thousands of people have been injured, and both children and adults are experiencing serious medical conditions and psychological trauma, studies have shown.
“Being a doctor in wartime means returning home after each shift, wishing the war had never happened and praying for its swift end,” Olha Zavyalova, an emergency physician and surgeon from the Dnipro region in southeastern Ukraine, said in a statement.
“People are exhausted — both the patients and the health care workers. Yet, as medical professionals, we do not have the luxury of being tired. Our patients need us to keep going and we must push through the fatigue to continue delivering the care they deserve,” Zavyalova said.
An October 2024 assessment from the WHO European Region found that 68% of Ukrainians reported a decline in health compared to before the war. Mental health concerns were the most prevalent health issue, reported by 46% of those surveyed, the WHO found.
This was followed by mental health disorders — such as anxiety and depression — reported by 41% of those surveyed, and neurological disorders reported by 38%.
Access to health and medical care continues to be a struggle, with one in four people reporting a decrease in access to medical services since the start of the war in February 2022, according to the WHO.
In front-line regions, including the most affected areas, only about 50% of residents have been able to access medical care compared to 57% in the capital, Kyiv, and 60% in the rest of the country, according to the October 2024 report.
Internally displaced people are among the most affected when it comes to lack of medical care. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, 4 million Ukrainians were internally displaced as of February 2025.
The WHO said 13% of internally displaced people lack access to primary health care facilities compared to 6% of those not displaced, and 9% don’t have access to a family doctor compared to 4% of those not displaced.
The October 2024 WHO report also found the cost of medicines and treatment to be a barrier to accessing care, with 35% postponing medical care due to financial challenges.
Additionally, there is a need for trauma care and rehabilitation, according to the WHO. The agency, citing the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, said that by mid-2024, 100,000 amputations had been performed due to the war. Meanwhile, there is a severe shortage of trauma specialists, prosthetics and rehabilitation services, the WHO said.
The WHO also warned about attacks on the health care system and workers. Since the start of the war, the agency said it has documented at least 2,254 attacks, with 42 attacks so far in 2025 alone, which resulted in 12 injuries and three deaths.
Amid the attacks was damage to the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv — one of the most well-respected children’s hospitals in the country — when five Ukrainian cities fell under attack in July 2024, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at the time. At least two people were killed in the attack on the hospital, including one female physician, and at least seven children were injured, according to officials.
In November 2022, a newborn baby was killed when a missile strike hit a maternity hospital in the town of Vilniansk in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, the local mayor told ABC News at the time.
The WHO said it’s focused on rebuilding Ukraine’s health care system, including installing primary health care clinics in affected regions and providing critical care including immunizations and mental health care, as well as treating HIV, tuberculosis and antimicrobial resistance.
“Health is the foundation of peace and recovery. Rebuilding health systems means restoring hope, dignity and securing the future,” the WHO wrote in its release.
(LONDON) — Russia launched 185 attack drones into Ukraine in an overnight attack coinciding with the third anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor, as allied leaders gathered in Kyiv to express their solidarity with Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air force said it tracked 185 Shahed attack drones of various types launched into the country from several directions. The air force said Ukrainian forces shot down 113 drones with 71 others lost in flight without causing any damage.
“As a result of the enemy attack, the Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Kyiv, and Khmelnytskyi regions suffered,” the air force said.
Sunday night’s attack follows a record-breaking drone barrage on Saturday night, with Russia launching 267 UAVs into Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X on Sunday, “Every day, our people stand against aerial terror.”
Ukraine continued its own long-range strike campaign into Russia on Sunday night. The Russian Defense Ministry reported the downing of 22 Ukrainian drones over four Russian regions.
Local authorities in Ryazan region — neighboring Moscow region to its southeast — reported a fire at an industrial site which they said was caused by falling drone debris.
Pavel Malkov, the head of the regional administration, said in a post to Telegram that air defenses shot down two drones over the area. “Due to the falling debris, a fire broke out on the territory of one enterprise,” Malkov said, adding that there were no casualties.
Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Counter-Disinformation Center operating as part of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said on Telegram that the Ryazan oil refinery was targeted. ABC News could not immediately verify the claim.
“The refinery has a processing capacity of 17.1 million tons of oil per year, making it one of the five largest refineries in the Russian Federation,” Kovalenko wrote. “It produces gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation kerosene, fuel oil and petrochemicals.”
“Aviation fuel plays a special role, which is critically important for the front-line aviation of the Russian army and strategic long-range aviation, which strikes Ukraine,” Kovalenko said. “This is the third attack on the plant since the beginning of the year.”
(LONDON) — Before the final votes in Germany’s election were even counted, Friedrich Merz, the leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union party, who is set to become the next chancellor, promised a major shift in relations with the U.S.
In a post-election debate, he promised to confront head-on a new reality — that the Trump administration looks to overturn about 80 years of policy and raises the prospect of abandoning security guarantees for Europe.
“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” Merz said Sunday.
Merz added, “I never thought I would have to say something like this on a television program. But after Donald Trump’s statements last week at the latest, it is clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”
Merz’s conservative CDU party emerged as the largest party in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, with 28.6% of the vote. The SPD, the party of the incumbent Chancellor Olaf Scholz, came in third place.
Trump and members of his both his administrations have called over the years for U.S. allies to invest more in NATO, and for Europe to take responsibility for its own security.
“However, we’ve also made it clear for years — decades, even — that it is unacceptable that the United States and the United States taxpayer continues to bear the burden not only of the cost of the war in Ukraine but of the defense of — of Europe,” Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, said last week.
He added, “We fully support our NATO Allies. We fully support the Article 5 commitment. But it’s time for our European allies to step up.”
Merz also talked about NATO, suggesting there may even be need to replace the military alliance with a new European security structure.
“I am very curious to see how we are heading toward the NATO summit at the end of June,” he said. “Whether we will still be talking about NATO in its current form or whether we will have to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly.” His remarks were made before the final votes were counted.
This month, Vice President JD Vance made a speech at the Munich Security Conference, telling European leaders the biggest threats they faced were from “within,” downplaying the security risks posed by China or Russia.
As Germany seeks to recalibrate its relationship with the U.S., the second party in the elections, the far-right Alternative for Germany, were jubilant at their strongest ever showing.
Notably backed by Elon Musk, the AFD’s strong showing, which doubled the level of support they received last time out, was hailed as a victory of its own.
It’s the strongest showing of a far-right party in Germany since World War II.
“We have achieved a historic result. We have never been stronger in the federal parliament,” Alice Weidel, the co-chair of the party, told a cheering crowd. “We have become the second strongest force as Alternative for Germany. And we have now firmly established ourselves as a people’s party.”
Musk on Monday said in a social media post that it was “only a matter of time” until AfD wins an election.
(LONDON) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared martial law early on Feb. 24, 2022, under Kyiv skies still tinged black by the smoke from Russian missile strikes.
Three years later, the ravaged nation is still living under the extraordinary powers granted to the government in order to sustain its defensive and existential war against President Vladimir Putin’s invading Russian forces. Powers that Russia is wielding to undermine the country’s wartime leader.
Under the Ukrainian constitution, elections — whether presidential or parliamentary — cannot be held while martial law is in force.
Moscow has for months been seeking to weaponize Ukraine’s democratic freeze, with Putin and his allies framing Zelenskyy as illegitimate and therefore unsuitable to take part in peace talks.
President Donald Trump now appears to be lending his weight to the Kremlin’s campaign.
On Wednesday, Trump criticized his Ukrainian counterpart as “a dictator without elections” — prompting widespread consternation of Trump’s remarks both within the U.S. and especially among European allies.
Trump also claimed — without offering evidence — that Zelenskyy’s public approval rating was “down to 4%.” Recent major surveys show Zelenskyy’s approval rating at above 50%.
The push for new elections is “not a Russia thing,” Trump said. “That’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.”
A source close to the Ukrainian government — who did not wish to be named as they were not authorized to speak publicly — told ABC News they believe the push is coming from those who “believe that Zelenskyy, personally, is a problem because he is not compliant enough, he’s not simply going to accept anything that they propose or anything that they demand.”
Kyiv has repeatedly warned that elections during war time would be severely destabilizing. If Ukraine is forced into a rush and insecure election, “We could see absolute political chaos in Kyiv,” the source said.
In reality, until now, the legitimacy argument has come almost exclusively from Moscow.
“You can negotiate with anyone, but because of his illegitimacy, he has no right to sign anything,” Putin said of Zelenskyy in January, repeating his false claim that Ukraine’s inability to hold elections in 2024 meant that the president’s term had expired.
The country’s parliament and its speaker “remain the only legitimate authorities in Ukraine,” Putin said in May 2024.
Foreign allies of Kyiv have dismissed Putin’s claims, noting the totalitarian nature of Kremlin rule and Russia’s own carefully managed electoral theater, that has kept Putin in power for more than two decades.
They have also pushed back Trump’s attacks on Zelenskyy, with most leaders expressing solidarity with him. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz — for example — said it was “wrong and dangerous to deny President Zelenskyy democratic legitimacy.” Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer also said it was “reasonable” not to hold elections during wartime, following a call with Zelenskyy.
Trump’s domestic allies mobilized to support the president and criticize Zelenskyy. Elon Musk, for example, said Trump “is right to ignore” the Ukrainian president. Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters, “We need elections in Ukraine,” while Sen. Josh Hawley likewise said Zelenskyy “should hold an election.”
Most Ukrainians politicians and experts have warned that any contest held during wartime would be vulnerable to Russian interference, could not guarantee the representation of soldiers deployed on the battlefield or refugees displaced either internally or abroad, and would threaten to destabilize the state at its most vulnerable moment.
Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament representing Zelenskyy’s party and the chair of the body’s foreign affairs committee, told ABC News that Putin “wants to use an election campaign during the war to undermine stability with Ukraine.”
“Putin is trying to push this narrative through someone in Trump’s entourage,” Merezhko said.
The Trump effect
Trump’s recent attacks on Zelenskyy appear to have bolstered the latter’s political position. Allies and rivals alike rallied around the Ukrainian president’s office in the aftermath of Trump’s broadsides.
“Only Ukrainians have the right to decide when and under what conditions they should change their government,” former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko wrote on Facebook. “None of us will allow such elections before the end of the war. Our enemies and even our allies may not like it, but it is true.”
Serhiy Prytula — another prominent political figure — urged compatriots to “ignore that rhetoric and ‘dictator’ accusations from Trump.”
The source close to the Ukrainian government said that certain figures in Trump’s orbit want Zelenskyy replaced by a more malleable successor, one less likely to push back on controversial American efforts to force a peace deal.
“According to their logic, the problem here is not Russia or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s the ‘the ongoing war,'” the source said. “What is the mechanism for changing that, and in their view creating the conditions for someone who would be more compliant in Kyiv? It’s elections.”
The source said Trump’s team are wrong to think that Zelenskyy is on unstable political ground. “They’re operating under all of these false assumptions, one of which is that if you hold elections in Ukraine, it will necessarily result in the success of a candidate who is willing to bend to whatever it is that Trump is demanding,” they said.
“I don’t think that they have anyone in mind,” the source added. “I just think that they’re confident in their ability to either create that individual in a way, or to cut some sort of private deal with someone.”
Even if the U.S. and Russia succeeded in unseating Zelenskyy in favor of a more pliant successor, “if you end up with leadership in Kyiv that is willing to cut some sort of deal that is absolutely unacceptable to a large segment of Ukrainian society, we could see fragmentation, even of the Ukrainian military,” they said.
“If the Trump administration pushes this government, or any Ukrainian government, too far, I think that this scenario becomes a real one, and this is certainly not in Ukraine’s interest or Europe’s interest, but I don’t see how it’s in the interest of the United States either.”
Zekenskyy’s challengers
For now, there appears little in the way of a concrete challenge to the incumbent.
In Kyiv, Valerii Zaluzhnyi — the former Ukrainian commander-in-chief who is now serving as Kyiv’s ambassador to the U.K. — is widely seen as the only real potential challenger to Zelenskyy.
Zaluzhnyi publicly fell out with the president and his team — prime among them Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office — in late 2023 over public comments framing the war as a “stalemate.”
It is not clear whether Zaluzhnyi would stand for election. The former commander-in-chief has dodged questions about any future political ambitions.
But a November poll by the Social Monitoring Center organization put the former general at the top of preferred potential presidential candidates backed by 27% of 1,200 respondents. Zelenskyy trailed on 16%, with former President Petro Poroshenko on 7%.
A February survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) indicated diminished trust in the current president compared to the extraordinary highs of the early months of the war. But it still remains high compared to most democratically-elected leaders. Public trust in Zelenskyy among 1,000 respondents was at 57% in February, compared with 77% in December 2023 and 90% in May 2022, around three months after Russia’s invasion. The latest poll showed a 5% bump in trust from December 2024.
Another recent poll by the Identity and Borders in Flux project in partnership with KIIS published on Feb. 19, showed two-thirds of Ukrainians approve of Zelenskyy’s actions.
The KIIS poll found that trust in Ukraine’s civilian government overall fell to 26% — a decline from 52% in 2023. In contrast, those surveyed reported overwhelming 96% trust in the Ukrainian military, with 88% saying they trust Zaluzhnyi.
The showdown between Zelenskyy and Zaluzhnyi ended with the former assuming an ambassadorial posting to the U.K., in which the former general has maintained a relatively low media profile and avoided any public revival of tensions with the president.
The same cannot be said for Poroshenko — another potential electoral rival — with whom the president is now locked in a very public battle. Earlier this month, Zelenskyy signed a decree sanctioning Poroshenko and several other politically connected wealthy Ukrainians for allegedly undermining national security.
Poroshenko dismissed the sanctions as politically motivated and unconstitutional. “Why are they doing this? Hatred, fear and revenge,” he said in a statement. “And because they have elections. Not us. The government.”
The IBF project poll showed a much lower proportion — 26-32% — of Ukrainians would vote for Zelensky in an election. But that still far outpaces Poroshenko, his nearest current rival, and remains far above the 4% figure put forward by Trump.
Zelenskyy has been unclear on his own political goals. In 2022, the president said he will “definitely” remain in his post until Kyiv achieves victory. “After that, I don’t know,” he added. “I’m not thinking about that now, I’m not ready.”
Peace could prove perilous for Zelenskyy if Ukrainian voters do not agree with its terms.
One former official — who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation — told ABC News the president “needs to blame Trump” if Ukraine is indeed forced into a controversial peace deal.
“He cannot stop this war now and take responsibility, because for him, it will be political suicide,” they said.
