u/Flimsy_Pudding1362

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights of Ukraine, Dmytro Lubinets, stated that there are systemic violations of citizens’ rights during mobilization and cited several cases identified by his office during monitoring visits.

According to Lubinets, speaking at a press conference, representatives of his office in Mykolaiv verified reports about a man who had been detained and severely beaten.

During the inspection, it was established that he had spent 18 days at a Mykolaiv TCC and SP facility. At the same time, the man already had the status of an active serviceman.

Lubinets said that the TCC explained the decision not to send him to a military unit by stating they were waiting for his broken ribs—sustained during mobilization—to heal. Meanwhile, military medical commission documents confirming his fitness for service were available.

Lubinets also reported that in Zakarpattia, dozens of people were found to be held without proper legal grounds. One man was reportedly held for nearly 50 days. Among those detained was also a demobilized combat veteran who held a combatant’s certificate.

Another case was recorded in Ternopil region, where a man with serious illnesses was mobilized. Two days after being sent to a training ground, he was hospitalized with a hypertensive crisis.

During another monitoring visit, the ombudsman’s representatives found a mobilized man with HIV infection serving on kitchen duty at a training ground, although, according to Lubinets, medical documents indicated otherwise.

The Ombudsman stated that since 2022, the number of complaints regarding violations of citizens’ rights during mobilization has increased 333-fold.

According to him, law enforcement agencies have already opened dozens of criminal proceedings based on possible violations.

In mid-June, one of the state residences near Kyiv was unexpectedly busy.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, the authorities have rarely used such facilities due to security restrictions.

This time, however, they chose a secluded state residence because the country's most influential officials were set to hold an important confidential discussion.

Those gathered included President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the head of his Office, Kyrylo Budanov, along with "security" deputy Oleh Tatarov. Representing parliament was the leader of the majority faction, Davyd Arakhamia. Representing the government was Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, while National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov attended on behalf of the NSDC.

As Ukrainska Pravda previously reported, Arakhamia had spent several months promoting the idea of holding a major strategic session for the country's top leadership. However, the meeting at the residence was not such a strategy session. If only because several key officials were absent, including Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko and Speaker of Parliament Ruslan Stefanchuk.

Even with this relatively small group, the meeting at the residence lasted around four hours. The most important part came during the final 30 minutes, when the discussion turned to elections and intense realpolitik.

That was when participants outlined what each member of the leadership wanted going forward, where each saw their own political future, what needed to be done to achieve it, and whom they would have to persuade not to run so that all these discussions—and the plan to hold elections in November—could become reality.

The inner circle

The improvised summit at the state residence near Kyiv vividly demonstrates how much the Ukrainian government has changed since Andriy Yermak's resignation.

As recently as last autumn, it would have been nearly impossible to imagine a meeting of this level without Andriy Borysovych being present. The very idea of holding such a discussion without him seemed unimaginable. Yet, as it turned out, it was entirely possible.

Moreover, it was specifically without Yermak that the president began speaking with his team much more directly and concretely—not about abstract political prospects, but about very specific configurations of future power.

The strategic discussion focused on three key questions: whether to hold elections; if so, when; and who might participate in a potential election campaign.

The answer to the first question was discussed based on the results of fresh confidential polling conducted in June, which had been placed on Volodymyr Oleksandrovych's desk.

The printed figures turned out to be unexpectedly optimistic for the president.

According to Ukrainska Pravda's sources, who had seen the polling data, it appears that Zelenskyy has managed to reverse the long-running trend of gradually losing public support. After many months of steady decline, the polls recorded a small but consistent increase in his approval rating for the first time.

The polling also showed that approximately 33% of voters who had already made up their minds were prepared to vote for the incumbent president in the first round.

Following him was Zelenskyy's main potential challenger, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, with support at around 22%.

Another potential candidate whose rating has steadily increased in recent months is Head of the Presidential Office Kyrylo Budanov. Nearly 14% of respondents said they would support him in the first round.

Members of the governing team attribute this shift in the political balance primarily to qualitative changes on the battlefield.

Since the spring of 2026, Ukraine has increasingly seized the initiative. Almost every day, Ukrainians wake up to reports of strikes on Russian oil refineries, defense enterprises, warehouses, and logistics hubs in Crimea or the occupied south. Videos of Ukrainian drones reaching deep into Russia's rear areas have become part of the daily news cycle.

As a result of the visible successes of the Defense Forces, the president's approval rating as Supreme Commander-in-Chief—who, for a significant portion of society, personifies these achievements—has also begun to improve.

The positive trend encouraged Zelenskyy so much that during the meeting at the residence, his team seriously discussed the possibility of holding presidential elections as early as late autumn this year.

The logic was simple: while his rating is rising, it makes sense to take advantage of the moment and secure re-election before the political landscape changes again.

However, there are two major obstacles standing in the way of such an operation. Both wear general's shoulder boards: Zaluzhnyi and Budanov.

According to the polling presented at the meeting—commissioned by Bankova from one of Ukraine's polling firms—the first-round numbers were favorable for the president. Zelenskyy was said to have 34% support (Zaluzhnyi 28%, Budanov 12%). But second-round simulations, even in this polling, looked considerably less encouraging for the incumbent.

In a head-to-head race against the ambassador to the United Kingdom, the president is currently trailing—approximately 32% to 37%. However, the trend is moving in Zelenskyy's favor, with his support steadily increasing.

Against Budanov, Zelenskyy is currently ahead, but only within the margin of error—approximately 34% to 32%.

In other words, regardless of which general advanced to the second round, the president would have no guaranteed path to victory.

That is why the president's team meeting was not merely a discussion about elections. It was also an attempt to determine whether a political scenario was possible in which at least one of the country's two highest-rated military figures could be persuaded not to enter the presidential race.

The general who did not say “no”

One of the practical tasks of the meeting at the state residence was not only to discuss the elections themselves, but also to understand whether Kyrylo Budanov sees for himself a political configuration in which he would not become a competitor to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

According to UP’s interlocutors, there is an influential group inside the ruling team, led by Arakhamiia and others, which considers the optimal scenario to be one in which Zelenskyy is re-elected to a second presidential term, and Budanov, for example, becomes Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada after the parliamentary elections.

The logic of this construction is simple.

After the next elections, the president will most likely no longer have a mono-majority. So the head of state will have to focus primarily on the powers defined by the Constitution: foreign policy, matters of war, and security.

“It is important for us that Zelenskyy can squeeze from Western partners the resources they promised him. Because a new person will come, and they will all try to wriggle out of their promises,” one of the top officials explained the logic of the authorities in a conversation with UP a few weeks before the gathering at the state dacha.

Meanwhile, according to sources in the president’s team, a powerful speaker of the new parliament would supposedly be able to gradually build his own political influence, strengthen his institutional position, and become a natural candidate in the presidential elections after Zelenskyy’s term ends.

Whether the president proposed exactly such a configuration to Budanov directly during the meeting is not known to UP for certain. Nor is it known what answer he heard.

However, several UP interlocutors claim that during his time in the Office of the President, Budanov avoids any direct answers to questions about political prospects.

As in the well-known song, he does not say “yes,” but he also does not say “no.” In practice, the general is trying to leave himself maximum room for maneuver.

And Budanov has entirely pragmatic reasons for such behavior. After all, even if he agreed not to take part in the elections, that would not automatically solve Bankova’s main problem.

Valerii Zaluzhnyi remains the factor that always exists.

Budanov could refuse his own political prospects in favor of Zelenskyy only if the former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine made a similar decision.

Otherwise, an obvious question arises: why step off the track if the president’s main competitor still remains in the race?

And this question, it seems, sounds in the head not only of the head of the Office of the President. Almost immediately after the meeting at the state residence, Bankova switched to talks with Valerii Zaluzhnyi.

The general who said “No”

The formal pretext for summoning the Ukrainian ambassador to London to Kyiv appeared on its own — Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was just preparing to resign.

Britain is a strategic partner of Ukraine, so the first part of the face-to-face meeting at the beginning of last week, President Zelenskyy and Ambassador Zaluzhnyi spent discussing the situation in London and its possible consequences for Ukrainian-British relations.

But later, as UP’s interlocutors in the entourage of both participants in the meeting insist, the president moved on to the other topic for which he had invited the former Commander-in-Chief to Kyiv.

Zelenskyy said that the situation on the front has recently been developing positively, society remains sufficiently consolidated, and therefore a window of opportunity has opened for holding elections.

However, the main task is to hold them in such a way that the country does not get a new internal split, and therefore, the president continued, it is necessary to avoid the risks posed by a confrontation between Zelenskyy and Zaluzhnyi.

In the end, the president asked the former Commander-in-Chief a direct question: “If the elections take place in the autumn, will you run?”

And, according to UP’s interlocutors, received an unequivocal answer: “Yes. I will.”

After that, the conversation continued for some time, but Zelenskyy did not even offer Zaluzhnyi any options for a future career path — it was pointless.

Although, according to UP sources in the authorities, among the possible offers Bankova was prepared to discuss not only diplomatic posts, but practically any state position, even the post of Prime Minister.

Instead, Zaluzhnyi tried to explain his position, saying that he had never sought a political career, but many people place their hopes on him, and he would not be able to explain to them why he should disregard their trust.

The president and the general shook hands and parted ways.

However, that was only the first act.

Soon after, while Zaluzhnyi was still in Kyiv, other negotiators were sent to him — NSDC Secretary Umerov and the head of the presidential faction Arakhamiia.

They repeated essentially the same arguments: a possible social split, the danger of too confrontational a campaign, and risks for the state. Zaluzhnyi’s answer did not change either.

After that, even the most experienced negotiators of Bankova ran out of arguments. But on parting, they still asked Zaluzhnyi: “Brother, but think about it again.”

After Zaluzhnyi left Kyiv, it became clear: Bankova’s summer attempt to restart the political process and try to organize elections in the autumn had run into a serious obstacle.

The plan that just a few weeks earlier looked like a quick political blitzkrieg had in fact moved into the stage of a prolonged trench confrontation.

On the one hand, Zelenskyy sees a window of opportunity for holding elections, even though all the challenges related to organizing them remain unresolved. His ratings, after a long decline, have once again begun to rise, and the successes of Ukrainian forces on the front create a much more comfortable political atmosphere for the authorities than “Mindichgate” or Yermak’s fortune-tellers.

On the other hand, the president has no guarantees of victory in the elections. On the contrary, either of the two popular generals is capable of prevailing.

But Zaluzhnyi himself is hardly in such an impeccable political position as it may seem.

His rating remains high, but it no longer shows the same dynamics as immediately after his resignation from the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Politics is cruel to those who fall out of the current agenda for too long.

At the same time, Kyrylo Budanov’s rating is growing, and unlike Zaluzhnyi, he appears in the information space every day. And this circumstance makes the future elections even less predictable.

Ultimately, if both generals enter the presidential race, they will inevitably begin competing with each other. That is precisely the paradox of the current situation: none of the key players wants to lose their chance, and so all of them together end up bogged down in a situation of mutual restraint.

And this, in turn, may unexpectedly open the way to the second round for a “third candidate” such as Oleksandr Usyk, whom almost nobody today considers a frontrunner.

Roman Kravets, Roman Romaniuk, UP