UKRAINE’S ousted defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has called for fresh elections in a challenge to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukraine imposed martial law on the day Russia invaded in February 2022, and as a result has held no elections since then.

Mr Zelensky’s term would under ordinary circumstances have ended in 2024, and Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump have at times suggested Ukraine should hold new elections before peace negotiations can conclude. Ukrainian authorities retort that it is impossible to hold elections with hundreds of thousands fighting and a fifth of the country under Russian occupation.

But Mr Fedorov’s challenge, issued in a YouTube video, may be more politically problematic than demands from abroad. The ex-defence minister is a longtime ally of the president — he ran the then television personality’s social media during his 2019 presidential campaign — and is popular, his July dismissal prompting protests across the country and resulting shortly afterwards in Mr Zelensky sacking the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi. Thousands-strong protest marches demanding his reinstatement still take place weekly in Ukraine.

“We must find a legal, safe, and realistic mechanism that will allow Ukraine to restore a full democratic process even amid a prolonged war,” Mr Fedorov says in his address.

He also took aim at corruption in Ukrainian political circles, and suggested he had been removed as defence minister for challenging a procurement system that was diverting large sums, much of it originating in aid from European governments, into private pockets.