Trump initially drew attention to the fact that Ukraine has not held a presidential election since 2019, when Zelensky – previously a comedian with no political base – swept to power.

He repeated the claims in a Truth Social post in which he accused the Ukrainian leader of being a “dictator without elections”.

Zelensky’s first five-year term of office was due to come to an end in May 2024. However, Ukraine has been under martial law since the Russian invasion in February 2022, which means elections are suspended.

Ukraine’s martial laws were drafted in 2015 – shortly after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and years before Zelensky and his Servant of the People party came to power.

Independent observers from the OSCE said the 2019 election had been “competitive and fundamental freedoms were generally respected”, external.

Zelensky won 73% of the vote in the second-round run-off.

Zelensky has vowed to hold a new election once the conflict ends and has yet to confirm that he intends to stand. Some experts have observed that holding elections in Ukraine before the conflict ends would be practically impossible, as Russian attacks on many cities persist and millions of citizens are displaced abroad or living under Russian occupation.

Trump’s intervention on the subject came just hours after the Kremlin questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy as his term in office has ended, a claim Moscow has repeatedly made in the past months. On 28 January, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin called Zelensky “illegitimate” in an interview with Russian media.

Referring to the electoral situation, Trump appeared aware that it had been a frequent Russian allegation used to undermine Zelensky, saying in his news conference: “That’s not a Russian thing, that’s something coming from me, from other countries.”

For his part, Zelensky has previously said it would be “absolutely irresponsible to throw the topic of elections” in the middle of the conflict.