So that all Ukrainians in Poland can vote it would be necessary to open 100 times more polling stations than usual and extend election day by a whole week. This, of course, if Kiev decides to change the country’s laws and keep the elections for 2024. What seemed like a mirage suddenly became a reality. In the West, several voices argued that Ukraine should go to the polls despite the war with Russia, and President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have changed his position. Elections in 2024? Okay, if the allies want to fund the trip to the elections and if there are guarantees that everyone can vote. The second premise of Zelensky’s argument is far more difficult to achieve than the first, and may be one of the main reasons Ukrainians won’t elect a new parliament or president next year unless the war ends.
The example of Poland, where more than 9 million Ukrainian refugees have already fled, is cited by Olga Aivazovska, President of OPORA, an NGO that monitors elections in Ukraine. Although the majority of refugees have returned to their home country, figures from last January show that Poland was the EU country that took in the most Ukrainians (939,865). And it would be a nightmare to get nearly a million voters to vote in a consulate in Warsaw.
“Currently 20% of our citizens live abroad”, Olga Aivazovska said in a recent interview, one of several she has given since elections are back on the agenda. In fact, according to her, this has never stopped and the country must prepare to vote on the end of the conflict. But when politicians from the West, from countries funding Kiev’s war effort, start talking, Zelensky cannot ignore them.
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