ANALYSIS | Gamble against Zelenskiy backfires as Ukraine protests end

A bid by ousted Ukrainian defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov to broaden a political fight with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy by calling for wartime elections appears to have backfired, failing to win over protesters who had demanded his return.

Zelenskiy’s decision to sack the tech-savvy and reform-minded minister in a government reshuffle in July triggered protests in Kyiv and other cities.

Many of the protesters said the dismissal of the popular young minister was poorly explained and could threaten Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, and continued protests throughout the summer to demand Zelenskiy reinstate him.

Despite the protests, parliament on Wednesday approved a new defence minister chosen by Zelenskiy and later that day only a few dozen people remained in a central Kyiv square where thousands once joined rare wartime protests.

“When we came out to protest, we did not come with the idea that elections should be held,” 22-year-old Iryna Vasyliaka said late on Wednesday. “That is not what we were here for.”

Fedorov, who warned late on Tuesday that Ukraine was facing a crisis of governance, is widely seen as one of a handful of potential challengers to Zelenskiy’s hold on power in the fifth year of the war triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion.

But opinion polls show little public appetite for elections in wartime, with Russian airstrikes ravaging towns and cities, hundreds of thousands of troops at the front and millions of compatriots living abroad or under occupation.

Olena Prokopenko, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, said Fedorov had been poised to cast himself as “a statesman, a politician of a new generation” after the war, but miscalculated.

“With this statement, he pretty much played on Ukrainians’ most sensitive pain points,” Prokopenko said.

A host of obstacles would need to be overcome for Ukraine to hold wartime elections.

An August 5 poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, conducted after the pro-Fedorov protests began, found 57% of ​Ukrainians want elections to be held only after fighting ends.

“Even amid these protests, people didn’t want to hold elections,” said executive director Anton Grushetskyi. “Why Fedorov didn’t understand this remains an open question.”

Appearing to announce the end of protests on Wednesday, chief organiser and veteran combat medic Dmytro Koziatynskyi said he “cannot imagine” how to hold polls with troops at the front.

It marked a stark reversal in fortune for Fedorov, who was credited with spearheading tough reforms and pursuing an innovation-driven approach to fighting Russia’s bigger army.