The Economist cited unnamed Ukrainian sources over the weekend to report that Zelensky might be planning to run for re-election during a deliberately short campaign season that could conclude by mid-summer and thus place his rivals at a major disadvantage by giving them less time to make their case. He’s considering this as a means of preventing Trump and Putin, who he believes are conspiring against him whether on their own or together, from pushing him out of power through upcoming elections.
Zelensky might have an ace up his sleeve if he goes through with this plan, however, since it’s likely that many of the soldiers who were killed might not have been taken off of the Central Election Commission’s voter lists. This could then be exploited to fraudulently help him win re-election through an avalanche of fake votes. After all, Zelensky claimed earlier this year that Ukraine only lost around 46,000 troops, while Russian sources usually allege that over ten times that amount have been killed so far.
For what it’s worth, the latest exchange of fallen soldiers saw Ukraine receive 909 bodies and Russia 43, which is a 21:1 ratio. It’s therefore likely that Russian estimates of Ukrainian losses are closer to reality than Zelensky’s are. That probably being the case, it can consequently be intuited that the yawning discrepancy between Kiev’s official figures and reality isn’t officially reflected in the voter lists. If the latter were updated, then Zelensky wouldn’t be able to keep up the charade of only 46,000 losses.
His government can’t admit that many times more soldiers were killed otherwise morale would plummet, all their prior lies would be exposed, and he’d be further discredited. Accordingly, there’s little chance that he’d allow the voter lists to be updated to reflect the staggering scale of his side’s losses, especially since keeping them hidden could facilitate electoral fraud. There’s no reason why he’d deprive himself of this after already illegitimately remaining in power since the expiry of his term last May.
To the contrary, he has every reason to ensure that Ukraine’s losses aren’t reflected in the voter lists, which he could accomplish by leveraging his influence over corrupt institutions. Anyone who leaks the truth about this, whether with respect to Ukraine’s real losses or his potential attempt to defraud the next elections through these means, could be arrested by the SBU on “national security” pretexts. Ukraine is already a police state in which this agency wields full control so it’s not a far-fetched scenario.
It’s here where the US could make a difference by publicly releasing its official estimates of Ukraine’s losses and demanding that the voter lists are updated to reflect them as the precondition for recognizing the outcome of the next elections. Zelensky would thus be forced into the dilemma of either openly defying the US and correspondingly discrediting the electoral process in the world’s eyes or complying and correspondingly discrediting himself at home by exposing his own prior lies about Ukraine’s losses.
It’ll also take time to properly update the voter lists, and the US might even demand that it supervises this process to reduce the likelihood of fraud, which could extend the amount of time that it takes and therefore result in a longer campaign season than he might be planning. That would assuredly help his rivals, who the US might then back to help push Zelensky out through these means as Trump’s revenge for their fight in the White House in late February. It’ll be interesting to see what comes next.
