We may be approaching the final days of Zelensky’s presidency

For much of the war being pro-Zelensky and pro-Ukraine have been the same thing. It was Zelensky’s refusal to flee Russian invaders that steeled his people for fight, not capitulation. And it was Zelensky who personally shamed and inspired Western governments to send tanks and missiles at a time when many were more inclined to send helmets and medical kits. 

But Zelensky’s moment is quickly passing into history. A growing constituency of his own people and of Ukraine’s political elite are calling for new elections and a swift end to the war. And the imminent collapse of the Kursk incursion – widely seen as Zelensky’s brainchild – will focus those calls into a clamour. 

It will be convenient to blame the coming massacre and capture of Ukrainian soldiers on Trump’s cutoff of military aid and intelligence sharing. But in truth things have been bleak well before the recent Trump-Zelensky meltdown.  

Yesterday prominent Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko called for peace with Russia after three years of passionate defiance. He called on Zelensky to stop claiming to be “saving” Europe and concentrate on saving Ukraine. Indeed, for all the recent talk of Ukraine standing as a shield to Putin’s aggression, Honcharenko pointed out the simple geographical truth that it is not Ukraine that stands between Russia and Poland but the close Kremlin ally Belarus.

Some claim that Zelensky reaped an electoral boost after his Oval Office humiliation by Donald Trump and JD Vance. With polling in wartime patchy and unreliable, that is hard to prove either way. But what is in no doubt is that in the wake of the Oval Office row Ukraine’s parliament came out with a joint statement strongly supporting the US and implicitly condemning Zelensky. 

The leaders of the Rada’s parties wrote the following statement:  “The Ukrainian people desire peace more than anyone else in the world and believe that the personal role of President Donald Trump and his peacekeeping efforts will be decisive in the swift cessation of hostilities.”

And the polls? It depends on what question you ask. Zelensky supporters point to recent polls that show a healthy 61 per cent “trust” rating. But when it comes to future voting intentions, the answers are very different. Just 16 per cent of Ukrainian voters said that they would vote Zelensky back into power in a survey conducted by Socis, a major Kyiv-based market research company, last month. 

There is also a major vibe shift under way in the Ukrainian elite – including among Zelensky’s former senior colleagues and allies. “I distrust leaders eager to prolong [war],” wrote Iuliia Mendel, Zelensky’s former press secretary. The West, she added, should “unite to halt this horrific devastation of Ukrainians. I stand with the Ukrainian people who live in Ukraine and who want someone smart to finish this war and save the nation.” 

According to one cabinet-level former official who worked closely with Zelensky until 2023: “Ukraine cannot have a president who does not have the confidence of our most powerful ally [the United States] … There is only one serious question in [Kyiv] politics today, who will replace Zelensky and how quickly?”

Zelensky’s diehard supporters – including many European leaders – see the hand of the Trump White House behind talk of regime change in Kyiv. Trump wants to please Putin at any cost, the conspiracy theory runs, and throwing Zelensky under the bus is a small price to pay. 

By this logic the Oval Office meeting was a calculated ambush. And we now know that top White House officials met Ukraine’s former president Petro Poroshenko and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the days before the Zelensky visit. Both Ukrainians denied that the meeting was a plot to oust Zelensky. But they have admitted they discussed with Trump the mechanics of holding early elections.

Is Trump gunning for Zelensky personally? The truth seems to lie somewhere in the murky middle. Trump’s personal beef with Zelensky goes all the way back to 2019 with a phone call in which the American president allegedly threatened to withdraw US military aid unless Zelensky dished dirt on Hunter Biden. That incident became the basis for Trump’s second impeachment in Congress (though it was vetoed in the Senate). 

But at the same time Trump was absolutely serious about signing a deal for Ukraine’s strategic minerals in the Oval Office last month. Lunch was waiting on trolleys for the Ukrainian delegation, and a lengthy meeting between Zelensky and a group of 16 senators indicated that the signing would proceed without a hitch. 

Instead, it went wrong in the room. Watch the first 42 minutes of the 53 minute Oval Office press conference and all was perfectly cordial – until Zelensky, in Vance’s words, was “disrespectful.” Cue Trump and Vance’s unseemly two-on-one pile on. And Zelensky, whose English is frankly poor, made things worse by being blunt to the point of rudeness. 

Leaving the blame game to historians, what is tangible is that power is ebbing from Ukraine’s president by the day. Zelensky has gone to Riyadh for talks with Mohammed bin Salman, whose government has played a mediating role between Ukraine and Russia. But it will be Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, who will meet the US secretary of state Marco Rubio later this week to thrash out details of a possible ceasefire that Trump will put to Putin. 

For different reasons both Trump and Putin want Zelensky gone – they both speak of him as an illegitimate president.

Can there be fair elections in wartime? There is a provision in Ukraine’s constitution for the speaker of the Rada – Zelensky party member Ruslan Stefanchuk – to temporarily take over from a President who resigns. Some argue that should in fact have happened when Zelensky’s term expired in May 2024.

Is there any way Zelensky would acquiesce to his own defenestration? He told reporters last week that he would be willing to step down in exchange for Nato membership. That was hardly realistic – but the principle is noble. He has shown himself willing resign for the good of his country.

For all of Europe’s bold talk of stepping up to fill America’s absent place as the arsenal of democracy and leader of the free world, the proposals thrashed out last week by Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Zelensky last week in London will be presented not directly to Putin but to Washington. 

And the £672.82 billion for defence that Brussels has announced are magicked out of thin air and wholly based on raising new debt.  

Ultimately, Trump is running this show. Zelensky needs to make one fundamental choice – whether a Trump-brokered ceasefire will be good for his country or not, and whether he will support or oppose it. In other words, is he part of the problem or part of the solution?