MOSCOW, November 10. /TASS/. The presidential election will be held in Ukraine as soon as it becomes possible to organize it in accordance with "four priority conditions," the head of the Ukrainian leader's office, Andrey Yermak, has said.

"As soon as such an opportunity appears, the President [of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky] will do everything to make the elections take place. These four points are very important to him. <...> If our partners come today and say they will help us meet these four conditions, the authorities, especially the president, will be ready even today [to announce the elections]," he said in an interview with Natalia Moseychuk, a journalist for the Ukrainian TV broadcaster 1+1.

According to Yermak, these conditions are as follows: the election must be recognized by the international community as democratic, soldiers on the frontline must be given the opportunity to vote, all those who have left the country must enjoy an opportunity to participate in the election, and the costs of organizing and holding the vote will not be covered by the Ukrainian budget.

At the same time, Yermak said that Western partners were asking Kiev for its opinion of holding the election, but, according to the head of the presidential staff, they did not exert any pressure. At the same time, Yermak added that his own thoughts were not focused on the election issue, for there were more important tasks.

Election intrigue

In accordance with the Ukrainian constitution, presidential elections should be held next spring. The possible cancelation or postponement of the presidential vote has long been the subject of speculation in the Ukrainian mass media. As former Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov noted, the official announcement must be made three months in advance, i.e. by the end of December.

In early November, Verkhovna Rada member Aleksey Goncharenko (listed as a terrorist and extremist by Russia’s financial watchdog) reported that Zelensky had allegedly ordered his office to start preparations for the elections scheduled for March 31. The Ukrainian media resource NV later reported that the country’s parliament was preparing some bill. There has been no official confirmation to date.

Zelensky himself has not yet given an unequivocal answer, but in a video message on November 6, he demanded a halt to attempts to "throw [the election issue] out into society" for discussion, adding that an election would be ill-timed (Yermak's interview was recorded before this statement during his visit to Malta on October 28-29). At the same time, Zelensky earlier suggested that Western partners should finance the voting in Ukraine if this topic was so important for the partners.

Some of Ukraine's foreign partners, on whose help it is completely dependent, have been insisting that Kiev hold the elections within the constitutional timeframe. In particular, this wish was expressed by US Senator Lindsey Graham, who visited Ukraine. A number of Ukrainian analysts believe that this is critically important for Washington itself, as the Ukrainian issue has become a central focal point of the presidential election campaign in the US, where the administration of incumbent President Joe Biden is keen on selling the picture of a "democratic Ukraine" in dire need of US support to its own base of voters.