U.S. secretary of state didn’t announce suspension of Ukrainian elections; Ukrainian president did

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s five-year term as the country’s leader expired May 20. Yet he remains in power as elections scheduled for spring were not held.

One social media user, who was critical of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent Ukraine visit, said Blinken, during his trip, "announced that they were going to suspend elections in Ukraine."

This Instagram post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The post is wrong. PolitiFact examined transcripts of all Blinken’s public remarks in Ukraine during his May 14-15 visit and found no announcements about Ukrainian elections.

In a May 14 speech, Blinken referred to Ukraine’s elections, saying the U.S. is working with Ukraine to shore up election infrastructure so when Ukrainians agree that conditions allow, "all Ukrainians, including those displaced by Russia’s aggression — can exercise their right to vote" and "have confidence that the voting process is free, fair, secure."

Elections to replace Zelenskyy would have taken place in March — two months before Blinken’s visit — but the country did not hold elections because martial law has been in effect there since Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia invaded. Parliamentary elections that would have been held in October also didn’t happen. 

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Ukrainian law, in Article 19, prohibits elections under martial law.

Zelenskyy in a Nov. 6, 2023, video address translated into English on a Ukrainian government website, said, "In wartime, when there are so many challenges, it is absolutely irresponsible to throw the topic of elections into society in a lighthearted and playful way."

He also said: "Now is the time of defense, the time of the battle that determines the fate of the state and people, not the time of manipulations, which only Russia expects from Ukraine. I believe that now is not the right time for elections."

All political parties in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s Parliament, signed a joint statement in November agreeing that parliamentary and presidential elections should take place after the war and martial law had ended.

A State Department spokesperson told PolitiFact that Ukraine is in this position because of Russia’s invasion. The spokesperson said Russia occupies nearly 20% of Ukraine’s territory and tens of millions of citizens have been displaced.

An Instagram post’s claim that Blinken announced on a recent visit that Ukraine was suspending its elections ignores that the elections would have already taken place in March and that Zelenskyy announced in November they would not take place because of martial law.

Blinken made no such announcement about Ukraine’s elections. He referred to them only in a speech in which he said the U.S. is helping Ukraine shore up its election infrastructure. The goal, Blinken said, is to enable  all Ukrainians, even those displaced by war, to vote and be confident the process is fair and secure when conditions allow for elections. The claim is False.