Anyone’s game

But if the US president gets his way and elections are held later this year, whoever wins and becomes Ukraine’s next president will be faced with the task of managing a country at war and perhaps steering the nation towards an uncertain peace.

It is hard to predict who might stand for the presidency — under the current circumstances, no one is declaring their candidacy. But it’s reasonable to assume that Zelensky would put himself forward for a second term. If so, he cannot be expecting to coast to victory as he did in 2019 when he won more than 74% of the popular vote.

While Zelensky has been celebrated in the west as a hero for his wartime leadership, his popularity has been damaged by a series of corruption scandals. In November 2025, several government officials and business leaders with close connections to Zelensky — including the justice minister and a former prime minister — were accused of stealing US$100 million from Ukraine’s energy sector by Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies.

Just a few months earlier, in July, widespread protests erupted against a new law that would place those same anti-corruption agencies under the control of an official appointed by Zelensky. This move was widely seen as an attempt to enable the president to stop any inconvenient investigations in their tracks and shield his associates from prosecution. Zelensky acted quickly to distance himself from both of these scandals. He reversed the controversial legislation in the summer and has called for the resignation of serving officials named in the energy corruption investigation. But these events have tarnished his reputation at home.

According to surveys conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, trust in Zelensky dropped from 74% in May 2025 to 59% in December. Although incumbents in other countries might look with envy at these figures, only 26% “completely” trust him and would like to see him continue as president. The rest indicated that they would prefer a change at the top of Ukraine’s political leadership. That said, a recent poll had his support at 30.9%, with only one other potential candidate within touching distance.

That potential candidate is Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, who is often described as a potential leader and whose support was measured at 27.7% in the poll mentioned above. Currently Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Zaluzhnyi owes his high profile to his former position as head of Ukraine’s armed forces. He served in that role from 2021 until Zelensky replaced him in February 2024.

The official reason Zelensky gave for the dismissal was the need for new ideas in the military, but there was a suspicion that Zaluzhnyi, widely regarded as a war hero for leading the resistance to Russia’s mass invasion, was becoming too popular. Indeed, a poll conducted in July 2025 found that 73% of Ukrainians said they trusted him, making him the country’s most trusted public figure. Zaluzhnyi has refused to be drawn on whether he might stand for the presidency, but there is widespread speculation that he is simply biding his time.

Another possible candidate whose reputation was built by his wartime leadership is Kyrylo Budanov. Recently appointed by Zelensky as his chief of staff, Budanov led Ukraine’s military intelligence since 2020 and is credited with its effective use of drones to strike targets deep into Russian territory as well as Russian-occupied Ukraine. Like Zaluzhnyi, Budanov has not indicated that he would stand for elected office. Unlike Zaluzhnyi, Budanov has not made a breakthrough in the polls.

A few veterans of past presidential campaigns might throw their hats into the ring again, although neither is likely to be a front runner. Petro Poroshenko was Ukraine’s president before Zelensky, serving from 2014 until 2019. Since 2021 he has been fighting charges of treason and, more recently, has been placed under sanction by Zelensky. Charges against him focus on alleged pro-Russian political and economic interests, such as his connection with the now-banned Party of the Regions and his slowness to sell off his assets in Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine. He denies any wrongdoing and has called the sanctions “politically motivated” and “unconstitutional”.

Yulia Tymoshenko was a leading figure in Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution. She is a former prime minister, leader of the Fatherhood political party and a populist politician who has a strong following among rural voters, especially older women. But she has recently been charged with offering bribes to lawmakers in what has been reported as an attempt to undermine the ruling Servant of the People Party. She denies the charges. She is only polling in the single digits.

It is important to remember that Moscow demands fresh elections in Ukraine as a condition of any peace deal. It is unlikely that Russia expects a pro-Russian candidate to be successful and take the country in a more Russia-friendly direction. But the entire process of holding fair elections in Ukraine anytime soon is fraught with difficulties that would offer opportunities for Russia to exploit. For example, the organisational challenge of creating accurate electoral registers that include the millions of displaced Ukrainians — many of them living abroad — would invite challenges to the fairness of the election and the legitimacy of the results.

The political divisions that inevitably come to the surface during election campaigns would provide ideal grounds for stirring up dissension and dissatisfaction — a well-established practice undertaken by the Russian security services — and thereby undermining the solidarity of Ukrainian society. So regardless of who becomes Ukraine’s next president, if the election goes ahead in the coming months as Trump is demanding, the winner in a broader sense may be Russia.