The prospects of the 2024 presidential election in Ukraine taking place as intended seemed rather unlikely since the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, since the martial law imposed in the country around that time effectively bars elections.
This week, the Kiev regime boss Volodymyr Zelensky has also announced that he thinks “the time is not right” for elections in Ukraine.
Commenting on this development, independent journalist Sonja Van Den Ende suggested that Zelensky appears “freaked out all the time” as of late, seeing how his army suffers defeat after defeat on the battlefield and his Western backers seem skeptical about Kiev’s odds of winning the Ukrainian conflict.
“He is desperate,” Van Den Ende said, arguing that in this situation, elections are the last thing Zelensky wants. “He doesn't want it because he knows he will be out.”
She argued that Kiev’s inability to defeat the Russian military has become increasingly apparent today, and Ukrainian forces’ attempts to pretend otherwise by launching drone strikes against Russia’s Crimean Peninsula cannot change that.
“When countries lose the war, like Hitler did, in the end they get desperate and more radicalized,” van den Ende remarked. “And I think Zelensky is more radicalized now. What we can hear from what he's saying and when he is giving some interviews, it's seems the guy is losing his footing and he knows it.”
Meanwhile, international relations security analyst Mark Sleboda noted that the United States seems to be “pushing” for Ukraine to hold next year’s presidential election, “even though, according to Ukraine's constitution, they should not be held” under the martial law.
“But then why is the US pushing for elections, especially since all the real opposition is banned in the country?” Sleboda inquired.
According to him, there are hints that the US government wants to “switch horses”, so to speak, by replacing Zelensky with one of Kiev regime’s top generals Valery Zaluzhny, “without going through the embarrassment of another US backed coup in the country to replace the leader so quickly after the last one.”
Sleboda also observed that there seems to have been a falling out between Zelensky and Zaluzhny after the latter recently told British media that the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive turned out to be anything but a success.
Noting how one of Zaluzhny’s aides, Gennady Chistyakov, got killed by an explosion while celebrating his birthday earlier this week, Sleboda remarked that Ukrainian social media channels are just "full of speculation that this was a political hit. They also allege that this was a warning to Zaluzhny and taking one of his pieces off the board by Zelensky's Chief of Staff Yermak who is seen as kind of a gray cardinal manipulating a lot of things within the regime.”
“This seems a fairly credible version to me, considering the way they're trying to cover this up and wash it away and the embarrassing feature of the whole thing. And that would indicate that we're pretty much on the brink of open war between the Kiev regime's political and military leadership,” Sleboda added.