President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sees five main obstacles to holding elections in Ukraine. He said this at a briefing during a visit to Canada.
"Election issue... because of security today is not relevant. The law prohibits certain elections during the war. I'm absolutely ready. (But - ed.) Security is a complex element of elections. The first difficulty is that elections should be held democratically and transparently. This requires independent observers," Zelenskyy said.
"The second story is how to vote for people in the temporarily occupied territories. I am not talking about those territories that have been occupied by russia since 2014, we are talking about what was occupied since February 24," the President said.
"Third. A large number of Ukrainians - not hundreds of thousands, but millions - are abroad. How to organize this process? So far, no one can find an answer to this," he said.
The next question is money, which in Ukraine is enough only to finance the army. The budget deficit of the state budget is measured in the hundreds of billions of hryvnias, it will need to be closed either at the expense of international assistance or borrowing.
"When parliament or the government wants to send money to one direction or another other than weapons, society is not ready to support this. And not just not ready, it is against as much as possible, because there is a war," the President added.
The last and biggest obstacle, according to Zelenskyy, is voting by the military.
“A million people, how will they vote in the trenches? How will they vote even at polling stations near the front line? Everything should be in air raid shelters, because we know russia, it will shoot all the people who come. And which of the observers will go to the trenches, ready to come and work there so that the elections are transparent? If we talk about the military in general, you have to understand that this can be the greatest injustice - people who protect the rights and freedoms of citizens will not have the right and freedom to vote. This is nonsense," Zelenskyy said.
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