KYIV — As Ukraine confronted a serious fissure in national unity — set off on Wednesday when the country’s popular former defense minister demanded wartime elections — Russia bombarded Kyiv with an hours-long barrage of missiles and drones overnight, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more.
The ex-defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who is a key contributor to Ukraine’s successful drone program, was abruptly fired last month by President Volodymyr Zelensky, drawing street protests. He rejected an offer of another government post and instead has challenged Zelensky by calling for elections.
But some political actors are warning that a vote during wartime — which would require changes to Ukraine’s constitution and other laws — could aid Russia by destabilizing the government, exacerbating societal divisions and distracting from the military’s defense against the ongoing invasion and air attacks.
“People understand that elections during the war are in the enemy’s hands,” an opposition member of parliament, Roman Lozynskyi, posted on Facebook on Wednesday, following Fedorov’s remarks. “It will be a war of all against all, a field for fakes and manipulations. A torn and already wounded society,” Lozynskyi wrote.
Lozynskyi noted that according to Ukraine’s constitution, parliamentary elections are forbidden during martial law. International election experts have also said it is virtually impossible to hold a free and fair vote with millions of civilians displaced by the war and hundreds of thousands of soldiers deployed.
To hold presidential elections, Lozynskyi wrote, Ukraine must “find a solution not only for the method of safe voting, but also for dozens of other unresolved ‘little things.’”
Mykola Kniazhytskyi, a member of the opposition European Solidarity party, said on social media that “elections divide society even in peacetime.”
“And elections under rocket fire will inevitably turn the issue of war and peace into the main subject of political bargaining,” Kniazhytskyi said. “The winner will be the one who can most convincingly sell the simplest promise of a quick end to the war to society.”
The fierce, hours-long Russian attack overnight highlighted how Ukraine is defenseless against ballistic missiles, as it lacks interceptors for U.S.-designed Patriot air missile systems. Interceptors are in short supply because of the Trump administration’s ongoing war with Iran.
“It was a massive attack — the Russians had been preparing for a long time, combining different types of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, aiming to cause as much damage as possible to civilian infrastructure,” Zelensky wrote on social media.
In addition to the dead and wounded in the capital, one person was killed in the Kyiv region and three in the central city of Zhytomyr, local officials said, while dozens more were injured.
Ukraine’s air force said that it shot down 39 out of 44 cruise missiles and 145 out of 168 drones — but in keeping with a new policy, it did not give the number of ballistic missiles fired by the Russians.
Large explosions in the capital shortly after midnight indicated that Moscow forces targeted Kyiv with a significant number of ballistic and hypersonic missiles.
“A horrible and sleepless night in Kyiv,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X. “This was one of the most brutal Russian attacks to date, with ballistic missiles raining down on our capital one after another.”
Sybiha pleaded for assistance from other nations. “We know partners who can deliver these interceptors, and we urge them once again to act without delay. Every delay is measured in human lives,” he wrote.
In one Kyiv district, eight people died after “the upper floors of a 9-story residential building were destroyed and a fire broke out,” and falling debris “caused a fire in a 4-story building [on] the top floors,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday that it had carried out “a massive strike with land, air, and sea-based precision weapons … on military-industrial enterprises, a transport and logistics center, and warehouses in the city of Kyiv and Kyiv region.”
Nor would the strikes, or the war in general, stop, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a briefing with journalists on Wednesday.
“At this time, given the position of the Kyiv regime, there are no grounds for optimism regarding a peaceful settlement. The situation on the front lines is well known,” Peskov said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine continued to grapple with the political fallout of Fedorov’s demand.
In a video address on social media late Tuesday, Fedorov said that Ukraine “must find a legal, safe and realistic mechanism that will allow Ukraine to restore a full democratic process even amid a prolonged war.” Democracy, he said, “cannot be held hostage by Russia.”
One European diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive Ukrainian politics, said Fedorov’s remarks were a “a political manifesto” and “a clear break with the Zelensky team.”
“I think he has a strong political instinct when it comes to understanding the expectations of the Ukrainian middle class,” the diplomat said. “It is still too early to say whether he will actually manage to keep this issue on the political agenda. At the same time, I consider his call for elections dangerous.”
Lozynskyi, the opposition member of parliament, said Ukraine was not prepared for elections and would need to create infrastructure and commissions that could organize voting by the millions of Ukrainians away from home, either living abroad, internally displaced or serving in the military.
“Holding elections that will be distrusted within the country or that are not recognized by the partners on whom we now depend is a ticking time bomb,” he wrote. “And the enemy will definitely want to take advantage of this.”
Natalia Abbakumova contributed to this report from Riga, Latvia.
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