During the war, conducting elections is neither technically nor morally feasible, emphasized Kuchma.
"You cannot deliver a ballot box to every trench. And without the votes from those in that trench, it would not be an election, but a sacrilege. Whenever the elections are held, it is absolutely impossible to predict their outcome today,” the former president believes.
He pointed out that post-war elections are highly unpredictable, citing Winston Churchill's loss in the 1945 parliamentary elections in the UK as an example. However, as Kuchma notes, there are also many "counter-examples."
"I can predict one thing: we are facing our second electoral revolution. The first occurred in 2019, when the team of [current president Volodymyr] Zelensky simply swept away most political figures. But by the time of the presidential elections, he had neither his own political party nor a political or professional team. Therefore, a large number of new deputies were not just non-systemic politicians – they were not politicians at all. The post-war elections promise many surprises. While Zelensky's chances for re-election can be viewed optimistically, the likelihood of the overwhelming majority of deputies retaining their seats is pessimistic,” Kuchma added.
Post-war Ukraine, the former president emphasized, will never be the same as it was before.
It will be a state with "unprecedented national self-awareness and unprecedented destruction of entire regions and sectors, with unprecedented pride and unprecedented pain, with an unprecedented demand for social justice," he believes.
"This will definitely be a country of heroes, but also a country of widows and orphans, the disabled and refugees. Therefore, its political landscape will be different. New electoral niches are already forming, and the outlines of new political forces are emerging. I am very interested in what the political project of war veterans will look like. How will the volunteer movement evolve? What will be the role and participation of emigrants and refugees? Where will the remnants of the pro-Russian electorate go and how will they behave? Will a national, state-oriented left force emerge for the first time in Ukraine's modern history? What will populism prioritize first?" – Kuchma added.