Talk of Ukrainian elections keeps surfacing in Western foreign policy circles, and every time it does, Mike and I end up in the same place: what exactly are we asking Ukraine to do here?
The framing matters. Are elections during an active invasion a sign of democratic health, or are they a distraction from survival? And more importantly, whose question is this to answer?
The Background Everyone Forgets
Ukraine's last presidential election was in 2019. Zelensky was supposed to face voters again in 2024, but martial law (declared after Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022) prohibits elections during wartime. This isn't a power grab. It's Ukrainian law.
But now, with the war grinding into its fourth year and Western support facing political headwinds, the election question has become a proxy for something else: Is Zelensky's mandate legitimate? Should Ukraine have to prove its democratic bona fides while actively repelling an invasion from a dictatorship?
Cooper's Take
I've donated to the Ukrainian cause. I've said it on the show multiple times; Russia's invasion is unjust, and Ukraine has every right to defend itself. But I've also been critical of how we talk about this war in the West.
"We are ignoring Russia and Ukraine and letting them have a war of attrition. Who can spend more dollars and have more men die? Frankly, rather than going and saying, hey, how do we finish this?" (Episode 35)
The election question feels like another version of that. We're putting conditions on Ukraine while avoiding the harder conversation about what endgame we're actually pursuing. You want them to hold elections? Fine. But then answer the follow-up: are you going to protect the polling stations when Russia starts shelling them?
Here's what bothers me: we think in four-year terms. Russia doesn't. Putin has long-term plans. And every time we add another hoop for Ukraine to jump through, we're operating on a timeline that serves domestic political cycles, not military reality.
"I was talking to someone today about the United States and how we think in terms of four years or eight years. And it's very possible that Saudi Arabia, Russia, they have much longer terms. So they have long term plans." (Episode 26)
My position: Ukraine's internal politics are Ukraine's to figure out. The West should focus on the diplomatic vacuum we've created by refusing to engage with the endgame.
Mike's Angle
Mike comes at this differently, and I think his framing is worth sitting with.
His core thesis has been consistent across multiple episodes: a bad peace is always better than a good war. That doesn't mean capitulating to Putin. It means recognizing that attritional warfare has diminishing returns, especially when one side has more bodies to throw into the grinder.
"A bad peace is always better than a good war. So it doesn't matter how just the war is, it's always the job of diplomats and leaders of a country to find some sort of concessions to bring about peace." (Episode 31)
Mike's drawn on historian Sergei Genco's framework about Putin's psychology: the idea that Russian leaders historically trade power for legitimacy. Give Putin a face-saving concession, even a symbolic one, and you might actually get him to the table.
"If you can give Putin some tiny bit of legitimacy, it may be enough to bring him to the concession table. Maybe that is giving him portions of those oblast regions that really might not meaningfully contribute to the economy of either country." (Episode 31)
On the election question specifically, Mike would probably ask: is this about Ukraine's democratic health, or is it about making Western donors feel better? Because those are different problems with different solutions.
Where We Agree (And Don't)
Here's the uncomfortable bipartisan synthesis: both of us think the election conversation is a distraction from the real failure, which is the absence of serious diplomacy.
We agree that Ukraine has the right to self-determination (including the right to decide when and how to hold elections). We agree that Russia's invasion was unjust and that Ukraine's cause is legitimate. We agree that endless attritional warfare serves no one except arms manufacturers and authoritarian propagandists.
Where we differ: I'm more skeptical of offering Putin legitimacy concessions. Mike thinks it's a necessary evil. Neither of us thinks we have the full picture, which is kind of the point.
"Who am I as an American to tell them to continue to shed blood? That's their decision to make. But I don't want to be the one to force Ukrainian men in front of bullets. That's not my place." (Mike, Episode 31)
The Bigger Question
If democracies can only fight short wars (wars that fit neatly into election cycles and domestic attention spans) what does that mean for a conflict like this one?
Ukraine isn't asking us to answer that question for them. But we keep acting like they are.
We covered Ukraine extensively in Episode 31: "Is NAFO a Meme Army or a Ukrainian Psyop?" and Episode 33: Putin's Cold War Tactics. Check those out for the full conversation.
