Ukrainian opposition leader backs Zelenskyy amid legitimacy concerns

ISTANBUL

Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko defended President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday after US President Donald Trump called him incompetent and a dictator, accusing him of refusing to hold elections.

Tymoshenko took to social media to express her support for Zelenskyy and offer reasons why Ukraine should not hold elections during the war.

“Elections during a war are impossible and immoral, because our military will not be able to participate in them. And without them, elections will never be legitimate,” she wrote.

She said the war needed to end before fair elections could take place.

“The only sequence that can happen is the following: first, peace negotiations, exclusively with the participation of Ukraine, then achievement of a just peace, and only then fair elections with a guarantee of the right to vote for our military.”

Trump on Wednesday called Zelenskyy a "dictator without elections" and warned that he “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

He posted on his Truth Social platform hours after Zelenskyy hit back at his suggestion that Kyiv "should have never started" the war, saying the US president was living in a Russian "disinformation bubble."

Trump has advanced negotiations to end the three-year-long war in Ukraine, without the participation of Kyiv and other European governments.

He said Europe has failed to bring peace to Ukraine and the US was successfully negotiating an end to the war.