Local elections in 2025: rumours or reality despite the war?
8 October 2024 18:38
ANALYSIS FROM 
Due to the martial law in Ukraine, no parliamentary elections were held in 2023, and no presidential elections were held in 2024. It is not known for certain when the next elections will take place, but from a purely theoretical point of view, local elections could be held in October 2025, as the last ones took place in October 2020.
As MP Oleksiy Honcharenko recently stated, a meeting was held in the President’s Office in September to discuss the elections.
“Of course, no one said the word ‘elections’ directly, but we talked about the electoral process and how to prepare. And generally about preparations for the elections,” wrote Goncharenko wrote on his telegram channel.
The topic of elections was also “fuelled” by the news that the Central Election Commission was resuming the work of the voter register. Despite the fact that the CEC later explained that this had nothing to do with the elections, they were simply fulfilling their mandate and updating the data on polling stations, the topic of the upcoming local elections next year has not faded away online.
In an exclusive commentary to [comersant], former deputy head of the Central Election Commission Andriy Mahera explained that any election requires preconditions that are currently absent in Ukraine.
“Elections are possible only if there are preconditions for this. They are related to the termination of martial law, which does not allow any elections in Ukraine, as well as to the security component, organisational component, human factor, because there must be appropriate employees of the registry authorities, everything must be clarified, monitoring of the condition of polling stations, etc.” he said.
Magera once again explained that all the actions of the Central Election Commission are simple routine work that they are obliged to do on a regular basis.
“Everything that the Central Election Commission is doing now, it is obliged to do all the time. And in December last year, the periodic updating of the state voter register databases was resumed. Something that had not functioned at all for more than a year. However, this is not directly related to the preparation for the elections. The CEC should always do this anyway. Moreover, the latest resolution of 20 September on polling stations actually concerns the monitoring of polling stations and gives various local authorities 3 months to carry out the necessary work and submit proposals to the CEC. Perhaps some polling stations will be eliminated altogether, where there are no voters. And where there are a lot of voters, new additional polling stations are likely to be formed because the maximum number of voters at a regular polling station cannot exceed 2,500 people. These are the requirements of the law. Also, please note that elections require money, which is not directly included in the draft budget,” said the former deputy head of the CEC.
Despite this, Mahera does not rule out the possibility of holding local elections in 2025 by 100%.
“There is still a possibility of local elections, but no one can say for sure whether they will be held or not. Many factors influence this. But I am sceptical about holding elections in the first half of 2025. It’s possible, yes, but the probability is extremely low,” he stressed.
We would like to add that the editorial team has previously investigated how the CEC members work and how much they get paid during the war in Ukraine.
Written by Aliona Kaplina
