Zelenskyy abandoned elections due to possible candidacies of Zaluzhnyi and Budanov – Fedorov
Former Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said that in June, before his dismissal, he had proposed to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that elections be held. According to Fedorov, Zelenskyy was ready to take this step but abandoned the idea because Valerii Zaluzhnyi could run in the election.
As Censor.NET reports, this was stated in an article by Ukrainska Pravda, whose journalists spoke with Fedorov.
According to the former minister, he urged Zelenskyy to hold elections so that the president could focus on the war afterwards.
"I told the president directly that elections needed to be held, because then you would stop thinking about them and start thinking about your monument. He asked: ‘What is your interest?’ I replied: ‘Victory in the war,’" Fedorov said.
He claims that Zelenskyy was ready to hold elections in June but "abandoned the idea because Zaluzhnyi would run."
The article also says that Fedorov believed Zelenskyy had a chance of being re-elected amid major attacks on Moscow and positive news from Crimea and Donbas.
According to the outlet, the idea of holding elections quickly in the autumn was ultimately rejected after not only Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, but also Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Office of the President, refused to rule out running.
Asked whether anyone had offered to fund his own political project after he publicly called for elections, Fedorov replied that "there were many interested parties," but that he himself was "not looking for partners."
- As Censor.NET previously reported, on August 18, Fedorov publicly stated that elections needed to be held in Ukraine. According to him, Ukraine must find a mechanism to restore a fully functioning electoral process even amid a prolonged war. He acknowledged that organizing elections would be difficult but stressed that "difficulty does not mean impossibility."
