President Donald Trump has renewed his call for Ukraine to replace Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but the country cannot hold a normal election while it is fighting Russia. The remark has nonetheless sharpened a question Kyiv has postponed for years: if a vote were held, who could run against Zelenskyy?
The White House wants Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of office. “I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president,” Trump told reporters on Saturday, claiming that Zelenskyy’s months long strikes on Russian refineries had hurt global diesel supplies.
Ukraine, however, is not obliged to follow Trump’s preference. Zelenskyy’s five year presidential term expired in 2024, but the constitution and martial law give him a wartime extension. Many Ukrainians favour renewing their political establishment, yet they are wary of a presidential contest before the four and a half year war ends.
Responding to Trump, Zelenskyy proposed holding a vote if Russian President Vladimir Putin guaranteed a 60 day ceasefire.
If an election were held soon, who could compete with Zelenskyy?
“If the elections are held fast, one of the former military [commanders] is Zelenskyy’s most probable rival,” Igar Tyshkevych, an analyst based in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.
Old political heavyweights such as former President Viktor Poroshenko, who lost the 2019 presidential vote to Zelenskyy, and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is being investigated for corruption, do not stand a chance, Tyshkevych said.
Ukraine’s former top general and current ambassador to the United Kingdom tops the lists of Zelenskyy’s rivals.
“At least since 2023, and especially since 2024, after his resignation, the most probable alternative to Zelenskyy, his most dangerous competitor who can defeat him in the election is Valerii Zaluzhnyi,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta think tank in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.
Almost two thirds of Ukrainians, 64 percent, trust Zaluzhnyi, while only 25 percent distrust him, according to an October 8 poll by the Rating Group, a pollster based in Kyiv.
That trust is rooted in his military triumphs in 2022. After defending Kyiv in the early weeks of Russia’s full scale invasion, Zaluzhnyi led counteroffensives that returned 40 percent of Russian controlled territory to Ukraine. He was fired in 2023 after a summer counteroffensive that had been anticipated for a long time yielded no results.
Zaluzhnyi remains a man of mystery on the most pressing postwar matters. Burly and imposing at 53, he is deliberately taciturn, leaving the public to guess his views on Ukraine’s economic restoration, its crippling demographic crisis or its push to join the European Union. He does not take part in talk shows, barely talks to journalists and occasionally publishes opinion pieces with detailed analyses of problems related to the war and general statements about securing lasting peace and security guarantees from Ukraine’s Western partners.
Zelenskyy, the former comedian, was elected in 2019 with 73 percent of the vote, the highest result in Ukraine’s history after the Soviet era. Despite a string of corruption scandals in his inner circle, the 48 year old is popular enough to take another swing at the presidency. More than half of Ukrainians, 53 percent, trust him, though 40 percent do not, according to the Rating Group poll.
Trump’s renewed animosity may benefit Zelenskyy again. After his February 2025 row with Trump in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy’s approval ratings hit a wartime high of 67 percent.
Still, Zelenskyy may have damaged his own chances through his appointment policies. “He came to power under the slogans of resetting the power, of picking the most competent, not the most trusted” ministers or advisers, Tyshkevych said.
Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov is the second most popular and charismatic military leader who has a shot at becoming Ukraine’s president. The 40 year old former top military intelligence officer was appointed head of Zelenskyy’s administration in January.
Budanov led daring operations against Russia, including a raid on Russian annexed Crimea in 2016 to plant explosives at a military airfield. In 2020, Zelenskyy appointed him head of the defence ministry’s intelligence directorate, known as GUR, which became an aggressive, technology focused special forces service. The GUR’s sea drone attacks damaged Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, forcing it to retreat from annexed Crimea to the Russian port of Novorossiysk.
Budanov is trusted by 53 percent of Ukrainians and mistrusted by 31 percent, according to the Rating Group poll.
At 35, Fedorov is the youngest person on the list of potential presidents. He rose to fame after Zelenskyy appointed him minister of digital transformation in 2019, and he managed to radically simplify bureaucratic procedures in a nation troubled by corruption. His ministry launched Diia, a smartphone app that lets users access more than 100 government services online.
In January, Zelenskyy appointed Fedorov, who had no military background, as defence minister in charge of logistics, budgets, reforms, anticorruption measures and deals to secure multibillion dollar Western aid or loans. Fedorov cracked down on corruption schemes by making procurement of new weaponry, food and medical supplies more transparent. He radically boosted the number of drones that paralysed Russia’s supply routes and destroyed arms and fuel depots, oil refineries and air defence systems. He also increased the number of ground robots used to supply food and ammunition and rescue wounded soldiers.
But the reforms angered Oleksandr Syrsky, the actual commander in chief, who reportedly pushed for Fedorov’s dismissal in July. Fedorov’s supporters rallied throughout Ukraine for weeks, while his approval ratings soared from 35 percent in June to 65 percent in July, according to the Rating Group’s polls. In August, however, he made an unpopular move by saying Ukraine should hold a presidential vote, and his current approval stands at 38 percent.
The top five list ends with Yevhenii Khmara, a general who replaced Fedorov as defence minister. A relative unknown until his appointment in July, he is trusted by 29 percent of Ukrainians and distrusted by 16 percent. He was a career intelligence official with a low public profile, but another 43 percent of those polled did not know who he was, according to the survey.
Numbers six and seven on the list are Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, a career diplomat who secured crucial support from Turkiye and Poland, and former president Poroshenko. Both are trusted by 24 percent of Ukrainians.
But Poroshenko, who came to power in 2014 on an anti corruption ticket but got involved in a graft scandal involving overpriced spare parts for military equipment, holds a low popularity rating. Seventy percent of those polled distrust him.
For now, the wartime legal framework means there is no immediate election for Zelenskyy to contest. Trump’s intervention has made the question of his successor more urgent in Washington, but in Ukraine the timing still depends on the war, and on whether a ceasefire that Zelenskyy has demanded can be secured.
