Putin votes, Zelensky doesn't: Ukraine mandate expired

Pilingui votes, Zelensky extends: the electoral double standard

Russia holds presidential elections; Ukraine does not. This fact underpins a discussion with over 112 responses, open for more than two and a half years, where two incompatible narratives about voting in wartime intersect. For some, Russian suffrage is a sham with no evidentiary value: it is argued that Hitler came to power via the ballot box and Franco also staged facade referendums. For others, the absence of elections in Ukraine after Volodymyr Zelensky's term expired reveals that the label of "dictatorship" is applied with different criteria depending on the side.

The friction point is not so much who is more democratic as who decides when an election counts and when it does not. And there, the material becomes uncomfortable for both trenches.

Why does Ukraine not hold elections with an expired mandate?

The most repeated argument to justify the suspension is material impossibility. A country with an active front, destroyed infrastructure, and a large part of its population displaced around the world cannot close a reliable census: it is unknown who lives where. Security adds to this. It is asked sarcastically if anyone would go on vacation to Ukraine right now to vote.

Against that explanation, it is pointed out that 80% of Ukrainian provinces are away from the front and their citizens could vote without problem. The only real obstacle, it is maintained, would be that recruitment brigades would take advantage of election day to detain men approaching polling stations. Even if only half the eligible population voted, it is argued, it would be preferable to Zelensky continuing without being re-elected.

The historical comparison launched from the other side is that of the United Kingdom, which did not renew its Parliament between 1940 and 1945 due to World War II, or the Republican zone during the Civil War. The response to that analogy is that the precedent does not make Russian democracy good nor prove it exists.

The census and security argument versus the urns appointment

The technical core of the matter is the census. Organizing elections requires knowing how many voters there are, where they are, and how to guarantee the result reflects the whole. With millions of internal and external displaced persons, any count would be partial by definition. Those defending the suspension insist that elections only in safe zones—for example, only in Lviv—would be immediately disqualified as an attempt to fabricate a favorable result.

Those rejecting that thesis respond that democracy is not a binary state and that a country can vote with limitations without ceasing to be a democracy. The question floating is what threshold of guarantees turns an election into a valid one. No one sets it.

Russian opposition: Navalny or the Communist Party?

Here the material gets tangled in a cross of data and disqualifications. One part maintains that the real opposition in Russia was never Alexei Navalny, but the Communist Party, and that Navalny did not reach even 1% of the votes. His institutional trajectory is recalled as reduced to seven councilors in the Moscow City Council, including festivities, and that he obtained no representation in the Duma.

The reply is that Navalny was a popular figure who was attempted to be poisoned, imprisoned, and finally assassinated, according to that version. Against that, it is alleged that his international notoriety comes from a video in which, it is claimed, he agreed to a coup attempt with MI6, and that it was after that publication when many knew who he was.

The institutional detail that slips in the middle dismantles several confusions: in Russia the president is elected by direct suffrage and the Duma goes separately, with elections in 2026. Comparing Navalny's municipal results with presidential ones is mixing planes.

Elections in times of war: the British precedent of 1940

The example of the United Kingdom works in both directions. Those who use it to justify Ukrainian suspension forget that that Government remained in office due to a total war on its own soil. Those who use it to attack Russia forget that the country did not have a foreign army within its borders.

The most graphic formulation of the argument was left by a participant: if you have a penis in your mouth you cannot speak, but if you are the one having it in another's mouth you can. Translated: Russia votes because it is not invaded; Ukraine does not vote because it is. The immediate objection is that Russians have only invaded Donbas, not the entire country, which reopens the discussion on what counts as invasion for electoral purposes.

The double standard of Western press

The most repeated thesis in the thread is that of changing labels as convenient. While Russians vote for Pilingui, it is said, Western media will speak of dictatorship; when they vote for a candidate aligned with the EU and US, the "young Russian democracy" appears by magic. The advantage of getting older, it is added mockingly, is having already seen this farce several times.

On the opposite side, a list of episodes in NATO countries is enumerated that, according to that relation, refute the invoked sarracena superiority: Turkey in 1960, Italy in 1960, Greece in 1967, Turkey in 1971, Portugal in 1975, and Turkey in 1980. To that list are added Spain in 1936 and Chile in 1973. The implicit argument is that allies' democracy has also been interrupted when the result was not convenient.

The 2014 coup and subsequent regime

The discussion derives toward the origin of the current Ukrainian Government. One stream maintains that the regime established in 2014 was the result of a coup against the legitimate Government of then, elected in polls endorsed by international bodies, and that repressive practices against the opposition began before February 2022.

The counter-reply demands citing the specific article of the Ukrainian Constitution abusa in 2014. It is emphasized that the new Government was voted in Parliament even by deputies of Viktor Yanukovych's party, which makes it at least a strange coup. The request for a specific norm remains unanswered in available material.

What does Zelensky play if he calls elections?

One line of analysis points to a less noble motive than security: electoral calculation. If someone wins promising one thing and does the contrary, they risk being swept away in new elections. The question dropped is in what situation Zelensky would be to antiestéticar his own electorate, precisely when the official narrative insists that people and president are one.

The counterargument is that there are no massive protests in Ukraine for lack of elections and that the issue only interests those who desire the destruction of the country. The discussion closes, as it started, without agreement: some see a dictatorship in Moscow that votes and others see a dictatorship in Kyiv that does not vote. With these materials, the predictable is that the double standard continues to be the most profitable argument for both sides.