Press
Former Russian ruler Medvedev repeatedly directs insults and threats against the West. Once again he targeted Zelensky.
Moscow – Since May 2024, Russia has been attacking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with a new narrative: the Ukrainian president’s term of office expired on May 21, 2024. Nevertheless, he is still head of state, which would amount to a seizure of power. The former Russian President and loyal ally of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, has now struck the same note and launched a verbal attack against the Ukrainian head of state.
Putin henchman Medvedev attacks Selenskyj: “chief criminal” and “joke figure”
Medvedev insulted Zelensky in his account on the Russian social media platform VKontakte as a “talentless joke figure”: apparently an allusion to Zelensky’s career as a comedian. The ex-president called Zelensky’s government a “gangster clique”. They had ignored the constitution of their own country and “greedily seized power”.
Medvedev, the former president of Russia, where many decisions are made solely by the Kremlin, ironically referred to the separation of powers enshrined in the Ukrainian constitution. He accused Zelensky, whom he described as the “chief criminal of the Zelensky criminal society”, of neither signing nor sending back for revision a total of 32 laws passed by parliament. He had “hidden them in his drawer”. After the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, this happened “systematically”.
Ironic again: Medvedev accused the Ukrainian government of wanting to establish a “dictatorship”. Zelensky had canceled the elections and wanted to “profit from the war until the last day and to the last Ukrainian”. He also claimed that the lack of resistance against Zelensky in Ukraine was responsible for what Russia called a “special military operation”. Most recently, Medvedev had also called for Ukraine to capitulate.
Elections in Ukraine are hampered by Russia’s war of aggression
What Medvedev ignores in his statements – of course deliberately – is that it is precisely the war started by Russia that is responsible for Zelensky’s longer term in office. The Ukrainian president’s formal term in office actually ended on May 20. The next presidential elections were supposed to take place at the end of March, but the Ukrainian parliament – the Verkhovna Rada – did not schedule them because of the martial law prevailing in the country.
In order for Selenskyj to leave office, a new president must first be elected. Andriy Mahera, an expert in constitutional law from the Ukrainian Centre of Policy and Legal Reform (CPLR), told the Deutsche Welle (DW): “After a period of five years from the day of inauguration, the powers of the President do not end automatically. They only end with the inauguration of the newly elected President, that is, only after elections.”
Since martial law is currently in force in Ukraine, which restricts certain constitutional freedoms, elections are not possible or are prohibited. This is because it is not possible to guarantee the principle of universal suffrage and free elections, as experts emphasize. (bb)
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