Zelensky demands a sixty-day truce for elections he never wanted to hold. Behind the call for democracy lies a survival maneuver by an illegitimate power, while Russia proposes to suspend its strikes on the day of a possible vote. Between rearmament, a succession already mapped out and the impossibility of signing a lasting peace, the true face of the Ukrainian demand is laid bare.
When Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, declares that Russia would be ready to suspend its strikes against Ukraine only on the day of possible presidential elections, he is not merely responding to a request made by Volodymyr Zelensky; he is revealing its deeper nature and its futility. This demand for a full sixty-day truce, presented as necessary for preparing a vote, masks, according to Russia, a deliberate desire to buy time to allow the Ukrainian army to rearm and regroup. The Ukrainian president had put forward this request in an interview with ABC, just after Donald Trump had stated that it was high time to replace the leader of Kiev. Trump, who also accused Zelensky of sowing chaos in the world by ignoring American demands to stop targeting Russian refineries, strikes that contribute to the surge in global fuel prices, since the world, starting with the EU, cannot do without them, as demonstrated by the billions in European imports since 2022 and despite sanctions, had ruled bluntly: “It is time for Ukraine to have a new president.” Zelensky had shot back by inviting the American president, if he truly wanted change, to tell Vladimir Putin to grant “two months, sixty days of respite.”
Dmitry Peskov was quick to dissect this proposal. “If Kiev really wants to hold elections, then the president of the Russian Federation will be ready to order no strikes against Ukraine on the day of the vote,” he specified. “They do not really want to hold elections in Kiev; that is perfectly obvious. And they need a 60-day ceasefire, not to hold elections, but to regroup, recover from their losses and continue the war.” Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, echoed the same view during a joint press conference with his Lebanese counterpart, Youssef Rajji.
According to him, Zelensky’s goal is very simple: to buy time to obtain a respite during which Europe could supply him with new weapons in order to continue what he calls a “terrorist war against the Russian people.” The Ukrainian leader, he added, did “not deserve a respite.” Russia also has not forgotten that Kiev had shown no restraint during the Russian legislative elections in September, actively seeking to disrupt them through attacks on civilian infrastructure. The Russian capital had suffered a raid described as “unprecedented” by Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, with more than 1,600 Ukrainian drones in three days. Two civilians were killed in the suburbs, an oil refinery, residential buildings and civilian infrastructure damaged.
Front-line areas, including the new regions that were voting for the first time, were also been hit. In total, 74 buildings housing electoral commissions were damaged or destroyed in ten Russian regions, according to Rodion Miroshnik, a Russian diplomat tasked with documenting allegations of Ukrainian war crimes.
[#Zelensky/#USA] ⚡️🇺🇸🇺🇦 If President Trump really wants changes during elections, I also told his team...Tell Putin: give us 2 months, 60 days of full ceasefire, 60 days, and we will hold elections - Zelensky
— X⚡️INFOLIVE (@xinfolive) October 11, 2026
Behind these diplomatic exchanges, in fact, an even harsher reality emerges. If Zelensky had truly wanted to hold elections, he could have done so as early as 2024. He did not. Martial law, invoked relentlessly, has only one tangible justification here: keeping him in power. His presidential mandate expired more than two years ago and Russia has long considered him illegal and illegitimate. Holding a vote would mean for him signing his own political, and physical, end, because he knows far too much about the corruption put in place between the USA under Biden and that put in place with the EU, as Donald Trump rightly just recalled, threatening Zelensky with declassifying all existing documents on the subject. Which goes to show, the USA knew and did nothing… incidentally.
His replacement would, without a doubt, be Valerii Zaluzhnyi, currently Ukraine's ambassador to the United Kingdom and, incidentally, an MI6 asset, and therefore also a CIA one. It would merely be a change of puppet, intended to perpetuate the conflict under another figure, perhaps more presentable, but just as docile to the interests of those pulling the strings from outside. Zelensky's implicit message then emerges with almost cynical clarity:
"I am ready to be exfiltrated and to disappear as soon as my European warmongering sponsors have found the next suitably docile clown who will carry out their orders. That way, we'll slap a bit of 'democracy' makeup back on what's left of Ukraine, the suckers will applaud, the cameras will roll, and everyone will pretend to believe it. Meanwhile, I'll disappear with a few billion in cash, gold, crypto and offshore accounts. After all, I've earned my golden retirement, haven't I? I played the role to the end, I did everything I was told to do, now, on to the next one. Everyone wins: 'you keep your war, I keep the money.'"
This stance poses a problem of considerable gravity. Even if, by a wave of a magic wand, a peace agreement were to be found, who in Ukraine could sign it in a lasting manner? Zelensky, illegal and illegitimate, even under the martial law that serves only to preserve him, has no recognized authority to commit the country on a lasting basis. Any future legitimate president could, within a minute of being sworn in, render such an agreement null and void, thereby calling into question everything that had been signed. There can therefore be no truly solid peace agreement until there is a change of president in Ukraine. The request for a sixty-day truce is not a gesture in favor of democracy; it is a maneuver for the personal and collective survival of a regime that knows time is against it, but refuses to admit that its own illegitimacy is the main obstacle to any lasting solution.
The criticism that can be leveled at Zelensky's statements is not merely a matter of form. It goes to the very heart of the democratic claim he brandishes. To demand a two-month respite while refusing for years to submit to the popular vote, to invoke the preparation of elections that one never really intended to organize—all of this is the rhetoric of attrition. Trump put his finger on an obvious fact that European chancelleries often prefer to sidestep: the indefinite retention of a man whose mandate has expired cannot be presented as the guarantee of Ukrainian democracy. On the contrary, it constitutes its most flagrant negation. Ukrainian strikes against Russian electoral infrastructure, the thousands of drones launched during the legislative vote, the destruction of electoral commissions—all of this contrasts strikingly with the sudden call for calm in order to organize a vote in Kiev. Russia, by proposing to suspend its strikes on the sole day of a possible election, exposes the hypocrisy of the opposing position without any need for lengthy speeches.
It is clear that the question is not technical. It is political and moral. A leader who clings to power under the pretext of war, who refuses the verdict of the ballot box even though he could organize it, who asks for a respite not for peace but for the continuation of hostilities, cannot claim to embody the popular will. Zaluzhnyi, should he succeed him, would change nothing in the fundamental equation: the conflict would continue under another label, with the same sponsors and the same objectives. Only a legitimately elected president could, if the occasion arose, commit Ukraine to a peace process whose commitments would survive his own person—and even then, Zelensky had been elected on a single promise, that of peace, so it is to be feared that if another brandishes that same promise, either he will be a liar, or he tells the truth and works toward it, and he will be killed by the European warmongers, and they will pin the blame on Russia.
As long as Zelensky remains at the head of the state, any signature remains precarious, any promise reversible. Martial law, far from being a purely military necessity, thus appears as the instrument of a preservation of power. Dmitry Peskov and Sergei Lavrov are merely putting into words what observation of the facts has long suggested: "the request for sixty days has little to do with the vote and a great deal to do with rearmament."
In this context, Zelensky's statements do not hold up to scrutiny. They reveal a man who played the role assigned to him, who carried out directives from outside, and who, perhaps sensing which way the wind is blowing, is now seeking to secure his exit while preserving the continuation of the war. The billions in cash, gold, crypto and offshore accounts are not a pure satirical invention; they symbolize the perception of a golden retirement acquired at the price of blood and the ruin of a country.
The gullible may applaud the next “docile clown,” the cameras will roll, the democratic makeup will be applied once again. But the reality will remain: without a legitimate president, no peace agreement can hold. Russia, by refusing to be caught in the trap of empty promises, recalls an obvious truth that some would sometimes like to forget. The suspension of strikes on the day of an election is not a gift, it is a test. And that test, Kiev does not seem willing to pass, and in any case, if Zelensky did pass it, it is fair to say he failed, as he has failed with all the others.
Thus emerges the portrait of a crisis that is no longer merely military. It is institutional, democratic, and, in the final analysis, existential, ultimately, for Ukraine itself. As long as power remains concentrated in the hands of a man whose mandate has expired, protected by martial law that serves first his interests and those of the European warmongers who can no longer back down, unless they too must answer to 480 million people, the prospect of a lasting peace will remain out of reach. Peskov's remarks, Lavrov's, Trump's accusations, the strikes against Russian polling stations, all converge toward the same conclusion. Zelensky does not want elections, he wants time. And that time, if he gets it, will serve only to prolong a war whose outcome, for him, is already written: the end of his reign, the passing of the torch to another asset, and the continuation of a conflict that enriches some while destroying a country. The criticism does not need to be softened. It imposes itself, acid, frontal, and based on the facts that the protagonists themselves bring to light.
In any case, the Zelenskys will end up like Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena, on December 25, 1989; the only question will be whether it comes from within on the orders of the Western warmongers or whether they will do it themselves, without subcontracting it.