The war has completely reshaped Ukrainian politics. Many once-powerful forces such as oligarchs and pro-Russian politicians have lost influence, and with popular military figures topping trust ratings, there is now a clear public demand for people with frontline experience to enter the corridors of power. But this popularity will only have practical application once the war ends and elections can be held. For now, the high ratings of military figures most resemble a symptom of serious public frustration and distrust of current politicians.
According to a recent SOCIS study, Ukraine’s armed forces are the country’s most trusted public institution. That is also true on a personal level: former commander in chief Valeriy Zaluzhny topped the ratings with 70.9 percent, followed by the head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov (55.3 percent). For comparison, President Volodymyr Zelensky had a trust rating of 49.1 percent.
Polls about how people would vote in a hypothetical presidential election produce similar results. They put Zaluzhny trailing slightly behind the incumbent president in the first round, with 27.7 percent to Zelensky’s 30.9 percent, but give him a decisive win in the second round (60.5 percent to 39.5 percent). Budanov and former Azov commander Andriy Biletsky would each get about 5 percent of the vote if they ran for president, according to the same poll. And in simulated elections for the Ukrainian parliament, a number of political blocs led by popular commanders would easily clear the 5 percent election threshold.
Ukraine has already seen a period of military figures entering politics en masse. The 2014 parliamentary elections, held at the height of the war in Donbas, swept a wave of popular volunteer battalion leaders—Biletsky, Dmytro Yarosh, Semen Semenchenko, and Serhiy Melnychuk—into parliament. That didn’t lead to any fundamental changes, and most of the veterans-turned-deputies quickly disappeared from the political scene. The next wave of veterans entering politics will inevitably be on a far larger scale.
There is already an emerging phenomenon of media-savvy individual commanders and military divisions. Right now, it’s a useful skill for attracting funding and new recruits, but when it comes to elections, it could also become a springboard for political promotion.
One example is the Khartiia operational brigade formed by volunteers in 2022, whose media relations are handled by a PR professional, Ivanna Skiba-Yakubova, and the poet and musician Serhiy Zhadan, who serves in the unit.
Commanders from the high-profile Azov brigade are also active at promoting themselves. Among the best-known is Colonel Denis Prokopenko, who was taken prisoner in 2022 during the defense of the Azovstal steelworks plant and was later among the officers exchanged for the pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk. Now commander of the Azov National Guard Brigade, Prokopenko is fiercely critical of both the military leadership and the political elite, particularly the methods of the current commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrsky.
Biletsky, a former Azov commander and founder of the National Corps party, began as a street leader of the far-right youth before entering parliamentary politics back in 2014, but then performed badly in the 2019–2020 elections. With the outbreak of the full-scale war, however, Biletsky returned to the fray, and now commands the elite Third Army Corps. Inevitably, the narrow electoral niche of radical patriotism is plagued by infighting, and supporters of Prokopenko and Biletsky periodically resort to violence to settle their scores.
While the war continues, these high percentages are more of an indicator of public discontent than a sign of things to come. Zelensky and his Servant of the People party also swept to power back in 2019 on a wave of dissatisfaction with the old elites. Back then, it was assumed that newcomers to politics, including actors like Zelensky and his team of former wedding photographers and IT specialists, would be untainted by corruption and closer to the people than professional politicians.
Now Ukrainian society is putting its hope in veterans. After all, surely people who have risked their lives for their country must be more honest? Current ratings only show the tip of the iceberg: many leaders produced by the war are not yet included in opinion polls.
Yet a mass armed forces formed through a general mobilization are merely a microcosm of society, with all its strengths and weaknesses. Accordingly, future veterans who run for office as part of a “Zaluzhny bloc” or a “Budanov bloc” will bring to power very different experiences and goals.
That very same wartime “band of brothers” mentality, for example, could serve both as a moral compass, restraining politicians from unworthy behavior, and as an even greater hotbed of corruption than that seen among civilians. Disappointment is inevitable. Some Ukrainian political scientists have suggested that it would be better for military veterans to be distributed across various political projects rather than to create a separate military party, whose political failures could negatively impact the image of the armed forces as a whole.
Zelensky’s team is already inclined to view a massive influx of military veterans as a threat to the political future of their leader and his party. Their efforts are aimed at either maintaining the status quo, with the armed forces remaining apolitical, or co-opting the most prominent figures—like Zaluzhny and Budanov—into their ranks.
Opposition forces have also made attempts to recruit their own military contingent, with varying degrees of success. Most notable is former president Petro Poroshenko, who has enjoyed the unwavering support of some officers and those close to the military.
A pivotal factor will be how the war ends and the status of the soldiers returning home from the front: as proud victors, or an embittered “lost generation.” In the former scenario, the appearance of a veteran corps in politics could provide a serious impetus for the rehabilitation of former soldiers. In the latter scenario, politics is likely to become more brutal, militarized, and prone to political violence: there are plenty of historical precedents for that. And given that Ukraine is unlikely to achieve its ideal outcome, any compromise peace agreement could be seen by some in the military as a sellout, or even a stab in the back.
There are many possible scenarios, but the militarization of all spheres of life in Ukraine is already becoming an incontrovertible fact, creating new challenges for Ukrainian democracy during the country’s inevitable emergence from its state of war—whenever that may be.
