With his constitutional Presidential mandate expired, the ‘champion for democracy’, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is facing the discredit by the Russian enemies.
Recently re-elected in a landslide, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s has been repeatedly clear about how Moscow sees the Ukrainian leader as lacking legitimacy.
For the first time, in a press conference in France alongside President Emmanuel Macron, Zelensky addressed the allegations and dismissed them.
Reuters reported:
President Volodymyr Zelensky said his legitimacy is recognized and determined by the Ukrainian people while criticizing that of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“‘President Zelensky’s legitimacy is recognized by the people of Ukraine. Our people are free. Putin’s legitimacy is recognized only by comrade Putin’, he told a press conference in Paris.”
As we see, the leader who cancelled elections sees himself as more legitimate than the one who held them and won in a landslide. So it goes.
The Presidential elections in Ukraine were supposed to take place this spring, and by late May, Zelensky’s five-year term of office ended.
Zelensky now is ruling by force of Martial law in his country.
“However, martial law introduced following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 bans any wartime election. The constitution says the president serves until a newly elected one takes office.
Putin claimed several times that Zelensky is illegitimate after his five-year term ended this May.”
Putin says that the only Ukrainian authority Russia recognizes as of now is the speaker of Parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk.
But Western leaders – who are after all Ukraine’s sponsors and handlers – have not questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy.
Zelensky’s response comes days after Putin started claiming that presidential power should be shifted to speaker of Ukraine’s parliament Stefanchuk.
It is perhaps not a great sign that Zelensky is now talking of himself in the third person. Kyiv Independent reported him as saying.: “It is the people of Ukraine who elect him, and I am very grateful for their support. Our people are free. This is what we are fighting for.”
The latest presidential election should have been held on March 31, 2024, with Zelensky’s term would ending on May 20.
Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk also dismissed Putin’s claims about Zelensky’s legitimacy; “Volodymyr Zelensky remains and will remain Ukraine’s president until the end of martial law. All this is in accordance with Ukraine’s Constitution and laws.”
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