“We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4 per cent approval rating, and where a country has been blown to smithereens.
“If Ukraine wants a seat at the table, wouldn’t the people have to say it has been a long time since they had an election?”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, (second left) leads a delegation in talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (right) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.Credit: AP
The high popularity that the Ukrainian president had in the early days of the Russian invasion, with an approval rating of about 90 per cent, has dipped badly. But as of December 2024, Zelensky’s approval rating stood at 52 per cent – not 4 per cent as Trump said, according to polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
According to Ukraine’s Constitution, presidential and parliamentary elections are to be held every five years. The most recent presidential election was held in 2019, but the declaration of martial law by Zelensky in February 2022 meant the March 2024 poll was indefinitely delayed.
Many in Kyiv say elections would be extremely difficult to conduct in areas affected by active fighting or under occupation, and while more than 8 million people are displaced within Ukraine, and millions more have fled the country as refugees.
Zelensky has previously promised to go to the polls at the end of the war, saying he wanted to give the more than 600,000 active troops a chance to vote. A poll in October last year found 70 per cent of Ukrainians believed Zelensky should remain in office until the end of martial law.
A demonstrator holds a poster reading “Real Americans Stand with Ukraine” during a rally to protest US President Donald Trump’s policies on Monday.Credit: AP
Russia has attempted to interfere in Ukraine’s political system for years, and there are concerns among Western allies that holding elections in the midst of the war could give Russia opportunities to manipulate the outcome, particularly in areas it controls.
At the meeting with the US, Moscow also vowed to reject any deployment of troops from NATO countries to Ukraine as part of any peace deal, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying after the talks: “The appearance of troops from NATO countries … under a foreign flag, the flag of the European Union or the national flag, is unacceptable.”
At a summit in Paris on Monday, intended to thrash out a common response to the US-Russian talks, European leaders clashed over dispatching peacekeeping forces to Ukraine. While the UK and Sweden offered to put “boots on the ground”, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain expressed reluctance to do so.
But asked what his view was, Trump said that allowing Europe to have troops in Ukraine “would be fine”.
US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff (left), US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (centre), and US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz (right) after meeting with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia.Credit: AP
“I wouldn’t object to it at all,” he said.
While the talks were positive, Moscow’s delegation said there was little chance of a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month, following their 90-minute phone call last week. Russia also repeated its demand that Ukraine not be allowed to join NATO.
“The conversation, I believe, was very useful,” Lavrov said. “We did not just listen but heard each other, and I have reason to believe the American side has better understood our position.”
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Zelensky has repeatedly said Ukraine would need security guarantees under any peace deal, and that could include NATO membership.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that NATO membership for Ukraine was unrealistic, and US troops would not be deployed.
Lavrov said the two sides had agreed to “ensure the prompt appointment of ambassadors to each other’s capitals and remove the obstacles that the Biden administration has put in place regarding our diplomatic missions”.
He said barriers included “the expulsion of diplomats, the issue of the seizure of our property and banking transactions”.
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“Our deputies will soon arrange a meeting to assess the need for removing these barriers,” he said.
The talks have sparked fears in Kyiv and in European capitals that Trump is prepared to settle the conflict on Putin’s terms. Trans-Atlantic ties – already battered by a scathing speech by US Vice-President J.D. Vance that accused European leaders of ignoring the will of their voters – have been strained further by the fact that the Riyadh meeting took place without the participation of US allies, or that of Ukraine.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, referencing Ukraine and the EU’s absence from the talks in Riyadh, said “no one is being sidelined here”.
He said that some “very positive things for the United States, for Europe, for Ukraine, for the world” could emerge – “but first it begins by the end of this conflict”.
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Rubio said that all sides would need to make concessions to end the three-year war, adding it was the first step of a long and difficult journey, but an important one.
As the talks took place, Zelensky visited his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has previously sought to play a brokering role in the conflict. Zelensky had cancelled his own trip to Saudi Arabia, which had been planned for Wednesday, in protest against his exclusion.
“We don’t want a peace brokered behind the scenes without our involvement,” the Ukrainian president said. “Without Ukraine, peace cannot be achieved.”