Although many economists have cautioned about an impending banking crisis in Russia for a while, now the warnings are coming even from within government circles. In Russia, where the Kremlin frowns upon any admission of weakness, especially if it is related to banks, considering the nightmarish memories of the 1998 default, such a concession is very telling.

What does a banking crisis in Russia look like? How has it sprung into existence? How will it end? Can it be fixed?

Banking Principles. The Basics.

Banks are businesses. Their job is to make money by using other people’s. What banks do is take cash from people who have it and give it to people who need it. They charge the second lot a fee for lending them money, and this is how they pay the first lot for… well, lending them money. Without depositors, banks have nothing to lend. Without borrowers, banks have nothing to pay depositors with. It is a circle.

Problems start when either side of this arrangement breaks down. When depositors take their money out, banks lose the funds they need to lend and earn. When borrowers stop repaying their loans, banks cannot pay depositors back. Well, you get the idea.

What is happening in Russia is that the fish is rotting from both sides. People are withdrawing their money, so they are no longer lending to the banks. And those who owe money to the banks have stopped paying on their loans.

Another element of banking business is lending money to the government when it overspends. Normally, this is not the only avenue governments have. Countries routinely buy sovereign debt from each other in the form of government bonds and earn interest on them. You could say countries act as a bank to other countries.

Russia, however, no longer has access to foreign capital. Russia was already under certain sanctions pre-2022, but following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, foreign investment fell off a cliff. Before 2022, private foreign investors owned about 22% of Russian government securities. That figure has fallen to around 3%. Even China is not lending Russia any money. Beijing refused to let Russia sell government bonds on the Chinese market.

Since foreign funding is not available, Russia has been borrowing money from its banks. But with banks haemorrhaging money, they cannot afford to lend any funds to the government. In fact, they are hoping that the government will bail them out.

As you can imagine, this is not a normal situation. So, what caused it?

Missing Quarter Budget

The short answer is war. Before 2022, Russia did not have a budget deficit, quite the contrary — it was one of the rare countries with a budget surplus. Similar to other oil-rich countries, the surplus went into the Sovereign Wealth Fund which was used as a reserve for rainy days. When the rest of the world emptied their reserves to bail out economies during the Covid standstill, the Russian government held strong and did not pay anybody a dime. As a result, by the time the war started, they had around 8.9 trillion roubles (roughly $113 billion) in liquid reserves. Currently that sum stands at around 3.5 trillion roubles.

Although 3.5 trillion roubles (circa $43 billion) might sound like a lot to work with, the budget deficit for 2026 alone is almost double this already, and the year is nowhere near the end. By all accounts, when you calculate the expected final deficit, the shortfall in the Social Fund which pays state employees and pensioners, and the deficits run up by regional governments, the total black hole in Russian finances is expected to reach 10 to 11 trillion roubles ($122 to $134 billion). Considering the entire Russian budget is about 44 trillion roubles, we are talking about a quarter of the budget missing.

This was driven by expanding military spending which currently officially stands at around 30% of the entire budget. Add security services and it reaches 38%. Factor in adjacent war-related spending hidden in other budget lines and the figure is well over 50%. We should also consider that it will not be the military side that suffers from the shortage.

Let’s use an old Soviet joke to illustrate this. To a boy’s question if the increase in vodka prices means his dad would be drinking less, dad replies ‘No, son, it means you will be eating less’.

Unproductive Cycle

When the full-scale war started, Western companies pulled out and sanctions disrupted imports. Despite Russia trying to become more self-reliant following the first wave of sanctions in 2014 after the occupation of Crimea, as a kleptocracy it was not suited for independent economic development. As a result, over a very short period most of the products Russians used, from food and medicine to machinery and spare parts, first disappeared from the shops, and when they were gradually brought back courtesy of Chinese supply lines, their prices had increased severalfold. Fewer goods were available, and those that were cost more. And voilà! We have inflation.

On top of this, a mass of war-related money was injected into the economy. It was not used to perpetuate a productive cycle — in other words, it was not used to make goods and thus earn more money, which could pay for the production of the next lot of goods. The money went into making things that were destroyed in Ukraine and could not be sold. Instead of strengthening the economy, it fed inflation.

There are two main ways to combat inflation: raise interest rates to make borrowing expensive and slow spending or cut government spending to reduce the amount of money entering the economy. Essentially, it is like cancer — you need to starve it by cutting off whatever is feeding it.

Cutting spending was not an option. So, the Russian Central Bank raised the interest rates. This made borrowing very expensive for everybody. Including businesses. At the same time, military spending continued unabated. The productive side of the economy was starved of cash, while the side that only consumed and did not create any value was flooded with it. Inflation remained unaffected.

Non-payments

As the government was battling the budget deficit, it naturally raised taxes and reduced concessions. High interest rates which at one point reached 21% made business borrowing unaffordable. High inflation meant the population had less money for purchases. And this was even before Ukraine took the hammer to Russia’s fuel industry and retail sector.

Construction stagnated and all but collapsed after subsidised mortgage programs were withdrawn in 2024. Money that construction companies borrowed from the banks was locked in property that either nobody was buying or that could not be finished due to lack of funds. In 2026, the government refused to bail out Samolet — oddly named after the Russian word for airplane — the country’s largest construction company with a 19% market share.

The current fuel crisis might claim another victim come autumn. Agriculture runs on credit — farmers take out loans to buy expensive equipment and repay them from the harvest. Gas stations have at times imposed limits of 100 to 200 litres per customer, while a single combine harvester burns hundreds of litres per day. In desperation, the Agriculture Ministry has offered farmers furnace oil as a substitute for diesel — fuel with sulphur content 90 times higher than what they used last year.

Much of Russia’s agricultural fleet runs on Western-made equipment, predominantly John Deere, designed for clean fuel. Furnace oil destroys filters, fuel pumps and injectors. It can run Soviet-era tractors. It cannot run anything modern. Even if the harvest survives, farmers may not be able to sell it abroad. Ukraine has been targeting shipping in southern Russia, and dumping produce domestically at rock-bottom prices will not cover production costs, let alone repay the loans. That is the money that the banks do not get back to repay their own creditors.

Before the war, overdue payments between Russian businesses stood at roughly 3 trillion roubles. That figure has since tripled to 9 trillion — and that only covers companies large enough to be captured by official statistics.

Added to this, a massive contingent of small and medium business owners who invested funds into stock have just seen it go up in flames when Wildberries warehouses were hit. If online warehousing is now a military target, the entire e-commerce model in Russia becomes unviable. Trade will have to move back to local shops, with higher costs and slower turnover. And more tax avoidance opportunities.

And this is just a small cross section of businesses that are suffering as a result of the catastrophic situation in the economy, the root cause of which is the war.

In the Soviet planned economy, roughly 17% of enterprises operated at a loss but were kept alive because the state needed their output. Today, 34% of large Russian companies are loss-making — worse than the USSR.

Money Under the Mattress

Traditionally, when the economy is struggling and inflation is clearly observable, people stop spending and start saving. Not this time though.

First, people have noticed that money buys a lot less than it did before. And then, as any former inmate of the USSR will tell you — one of the most dreaded words in the universe is ‘deficit’. In the USSR that meant you had the money, but you had nothing to buy — there were no goods in the shops. Russians are well conditioned by their recent history — they are expecting to have no money and nothing to buy at the same time. As a result, they buy what they can now, because later it might not be possible.

What makes saving in the traditional sense unattractive is also the fact that several government officials have publicly floated the idea of confiscating private savings to replenish the state coffers. Since this is exactly what happened in January 1991 as the USSR drew its dying breath, people in Russia are naturally well trained when it comes to skullduggery like this. Money has been leaving banks in large quantities. No amount of promises, or even banks raising deposit interest rates while loan rates are being lowered, can persuade them to bring their cash back.

In the last six months alone, 2.5 trillion roubles have been withdrawn. It started when the Kremlin shut down cellular coverage to disrupt Ukrainian drone attacks, inadvertently cutting off the digital banking services most Russians rely on. People withdrew cash to pay for things. Then they kept withdrawing. Smaller businesses discovered that cash transactions were a convenient way to avoid taxes. Cash payment discounts are becoming popular. Businesses and ordinary people are excluding banks from as many transactions as possible. Unlike before, when money taken out of banks would eventually find its way back through deposits, now once it has left, it does not return.

There are also indications that large sums of money are leaving Russia via cryptocurrency.

How Does This End?

For the banks to continue providing services, they need funds — the money they make from borrowing from one side and lending to the other. When this gap narrows or disappears entirely, banks cannot function. The more obvious the problem becomes to the population, the closer Russia gets to a bank run — when everybody tries to withdraw their money at the same time. No bank holds enough cash to pay all depositors at once.

The government has three options: print money, rob the businesses, or freeze ordinary savers’ accounts. A normal country would not get into this predicament. Be that as it may, the Russian government does not have the money to bail out anybody. In fact, they are hoping that the banks will bail out the government.

Some form of all three has been happening throughout the war years already. Putin’s oligarchs have been regularly paying ransoms for the right not to be thrown into cells (or out of the window). Fortunes have changed hands, old alliances have been redrawn, and even Putin’s close friend Rotenberg appears to have fallen out of favour.

According to some economists, freezing savers’ accounts might eventually be unavoidable as a short-term measure. But none of this works long term or covers the budget deficit.

As for money printing, this has already happened. In January 2022, there were 65 trillion roubles in the Russian economy. That figure has since doubled to over 130 trillion. This is exactly what has fuelled the inflation. And yet this is the only recourse the Russian government has — they will have to print yet more money to bail out the banks. Eventually this might create hyperinflation. That is when you need a wheelbarrow to carry cash to the supermarket and hope that the prices have not gone up by the time you reach the cash register. Russians should remember this one from the 90s.

Can It Be Fixed?

As the Central Bank lends money to banks to bail them out, the banks lend to the government so the government can keep spending on the war. They keep bailing each other out. Each rotation creates more money, which again feeds inflation, which drives more non-payments and more withdrawals.

Ultimately, spending over half of the entire budget on trying to wipe out a neighbouring country is not a sound business model.

All dollar equivalents in this article are based on Russia’s official exchange rate, which is artificially managed through capital controls and restricted trading. The real dollar value of rouble-denominated figures is almost certainly lower.

Donald Trump’s and Vladimir Putin’s last week’s phone call last reignited discussions about a possible ceasefire in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Could a ceasefire finally happen? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? The answer to this was an obvious no and no. This was never about peace or even a ceasefire.

Putin is so terrified that his military parade on 9 May will be rained on by Ukrainian drones and possibly even missiles that he ran to Trump, complaining about Ukraine, and manoeuvred him into fronting a ceasefire request on the parade day. And then according to Zelenskyy Trump went and forgot to discuss any ceasefire with Ukraine.

Having failed to secure Ukraine’s compliance via Trump, Russia unilaterally declared ceasefire from 8–9 May, threatening Ukraine with hell, retribution, annihilation — the usual. The Russian Defence Ministry even threatened European embassies in Kyiv, telling them to evacuate before the 9th of May. Ukraine answered by unilaterally declaring a regime of silence starting at midnight on the night of 5–6 May, which Russia promptly ignored. Consequently, Ukraine can now disregard Russian ceasefire.

So why is the parade so important and what does it symbolise?

A Parade in Want of Protection

The Kremlin’s fear of Ukrainian disruption on the 9th of May festivities is hardly irrational. Ukraine has recently increased its attacks on Russian oil processing and export hubs. Additionally, at the end of February, Ukraine hit a missile assembly factory in Votkinsk some 1,400km from Ukraine using its FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile. It can hit Moscow – even if all missiles were shot down, the debris alone would wreak havoc for days. Even if Ukraine does not attack Moscow on the day of the parade, Moscow knows it has the means to do it; the fear and uncertainty alone are enough to set the Kremlin’s nerves on edge.

Most of Russia’s available air defence has already been redeployed around Moscow, leaving many oil processing plants open to Ukrainian long-range sanctions — Ukraine’s own term for strikes that achieve what international sanctions have not. However, no air defence can guarantee complete safety.

As a result, Russia must either cancel its parade or secure Ukraine’s agreement to the parade via other means.

Russia has already downsized the parade considerably. All military equipment has been excluded, although the planes might still be on the agenda. Cadets and other military students will be absent this year as well.

We should remember that the last few military parades held in Moscow have been equally thin and vulnerable. The downsizing started in 2022, when the flyover was cancelled at the last moment. Bad weather was cited. It was sunny that day in Moscow. At the time, Ukraine had no weapons that could reach Moscow. So why did they cancel the flyover? They feared their own. The short military operation Putin had planned did not go as expected. People were still allowed to grumble a bit. And the first reports of serious casualties were coming in. The leadership was seriously scared its own military could take revenge.

This fear materialised a year later in Prigozhin’s march to Moscow on 24 June 2023. When the Kremlin dropped Prigozhin’s plane two months later, the window of opportunity for any violent revolt closed. Everybody who had reasons and means to harm the leadership was at the front. And fear of their return is one of the reasons Putin is not finishing the war. Having allowed convicted murderers and rapists into the army to bolster recruitment figures and then mistreated them and allowed them to mistreat each other, the Kremlin lost any claim on their future allegiance.

Since then, the equipment portion of the parade has dwindled every year in line with meagre reserves, and most years saw no foreign dignitaries. Except for the parade of 2025, which marked 80 years since the end of WWII, and was attended by Xi Jinping, Aleksandar Vučić, and Nicolas Maduro, among others. Xi’s presence in particular ensured that Ukraine would not gate-crash — open warfare with China has never been in Ukraine’s interests.

This year there are no live hostages for Putin to hide behind. Although Slovak PM Fico attempted to arrange safe passage to Moscow, the Baltic states declared: he shall not pass. Reports suggest Fico intends to travel to Moscow via Belarus by train to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and meet with Putin, though he has said he will not participate in the parade.

The Myth, the Lies, and the Long Con

Most countries have a special day they celebrate — independence day. The three Baltic states even have two of them — the day of independence and the day independence was restored following the end of the Russian occupation. Russia does not have an independence day — it has no one to be independent from. Many countries do celebrate their independence from Russia, however.

During Soviet times, there were two days that were treated as sacred — the 9th of May, or Victory Day, and the 7th of November, which celebrated the communist coup of 1917. After the fall of the USSR, the communist coup ceased to be a happy memory, and only the 9th of May remained.

The reason Russia has always celebrated the end of WWII on the 9th of May, rather than the 8th like the rest of the world, has to do with Joseph Stalin. When the first capitulation of Nazi Germany was signed on the 7th of May 1945 in Reims, the representative of the Soviet Union signed it without having full authorisation from the ‘dear leader’. The documents were signed for the second time on the 8th of May in Berlin. However, by the time the signing ceremony was finished, it was already past midnight in Moscow. Additionally, Stalin wanted to stress the importance of the USSR, so the Soviets uncoupled their Victory Day from everybody else’s.

There was also another reason. While the rest of the world commemorated a war that lasted six years, the war the Soviets fought lasted only four — from 1941 to 1945. During the first two years of the war, from 1939 to 1941, Soviet Russia was allied with Hitler. In 1941, just over a month before the invasion of the USSR, Nazi officers were honoured guests at the May Day parade on Red Square.

It is worth noting that WWII started in September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland from the West and the Soviets invaded from the East. The USSR’s war was different from everyone else’s, and therefore so was its Victory Day. Additionally, while for the rest of Europe WWII ended in 1945, for Eastern European countries occupied by Soviet Russia it only ended nearly half a century later.

A Trump in the Pocket

Although the current parade has already been cut to the bone, it is still supposed to be a symbol of Russia’s reach and ability to ‘crush enemies’ (or as it is - neighbours). Being throttled on this day in front of all and sundry would put a serious damper on the narrative of almighty Russia winning its war against tiny Ukraine that the locals are supposed to follow.

Additionally, the image of the strongman that Putin presents to his subjects depends on the visibility of that strength. Should anything unexpected happen on the 9th of May, that will expose the myth that Putin has built around him — the Russian ruler who ‘raised Russia from its knees’. If Russia cannot protect Moscow on its most important day, then what did the million or so dead soldiers die for in Ukraine?

All in all, the fact that Putin is scrambling to find anybody capable of reining in Ukraine is rather ironic when we consider that four years ago on the 9th of May in 2022, Ukraine was seriously expecting to be hit by a nuclear missile in retaliation for having defeated Russia under Kyiv.

It is quite remarkable how the situation has turned around. Last year, Zelenskyy trolled the Kremlin, announcing that Ukraine could not ensure the security of the Victory Day parade in Moscow. This year, Ukraine’s capability alone is enough to send Putin whining to Trump and even Europe as a last resort.

While Ukraine, having countered the Kremlin’s bogus ceasefire with its own, now has its hands untied and ready to either strike Moscow at will or simply troll it mercilessly and watch it squirm.

Today, the US partially removed sanctions on Russian oil. Scott Bessent, the US Treasury Secretary, dismissed the outrage, saying it would not affect the Russian budget that much. The state of the world is such that the words of a US Treasury Secretary are no longer taken at face value. So, let’s see if this affects Russia and how.

Background

First things first — the sanctions waiver applies to Russian oil stuck at sea after the US imposed sanctions and some countries were not quite sure how serious the US was — would they be punished, or could they quietly restart buying Russian oil at a later stage. The current US administration has been anything but consistent in its carrot and stick delivery. Be it as it may, a considerable amount of that oil was floating around in tankers, waiting for buyers. This is the oil that willing buyers are now allowed to buy.

The amount that becomes available on the market according to some reports can reach up to 124 million barrels, which is equal to one day’s global supply, or two weeks of supply provided by Russia.

So, all in all, not that much oil for the world, and not really that much oil for Russia.

Financial Benefits to Russia

Strangely enough, the income Russia receives is not proportional to the price its oil sells for. This is because the taxes are calculated at the point of extraction, not the point of sale. In other words, the taxes on oil are levied when the oil is pumped out of the ground based on the average prices for Russian crude oil, which is Urals.

Some background helps here. When the full-scale war in Ukraine began, the EU — unwilling to impose a full embargo and risk disrupting global oil supply — introduced a price cap on Russian oil instead. The idea was simple: leave Russian oil on the market, but force buyers to pay less for it, so Russia earns less. Russia’s response was to restructure how taxes are calculated: instead of taxing the actual sale price, the Kremlin began levying extraction tax based on the average Urals price — the official benchmark — regardless of what the oil actually sold for in practice. Once the tax was calculated and paid at extraction, what producers then sold it for was their own problem.

One might wonder how the sellers could afford to pay taxes on the profit they never made, since oil sold for a much lower margin than the official Urals price. It would be a fair question had the oil producing companies been owned by anybody else other than hand-picked individuals from Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. In that world, when your company experiences financial difficulties, the state bails you out. If you are not ‘in favour’ at the Kremlin, your company is given to a new inner circle member, who knows what his profit share is supposed to look like.

As a result, the tax for the oil that has now been liberated from the clutches of the sea was calculated long ago when the oil was extracted from the ground. The state will not get a dime from this particular batch. At least not directly into the budget.

Monetary benefits will flow to the chosen business owners who take a share for themselves and are the caretakers of the remaining funds for Putin. These funds are left outside of Russia and used to purchase much-needed spare parts for military needs and other products that are covered by sanctions.

So, in a way, the money will make it back to Russia, just not into the budget. The upside — it will not narrow the gaping hole in the Russian budget, half of which goes to military needs. Consequently, the panic gripping Russian business and banking elites will not be alleviated, and the Russian economy will continue its downward spiral. The downside — the money will go directly to military needs. Although at the moment, on the balance of things, it is not an obscene amount of money. For now.

Last but Not Least — Intangible Benefits

Financial gains, however, are not the only positive outcome of the sanction reversal story. Thanks to the current oil crisis and the US attempt to wear the markets down by sheer persuasion, Russia is portrayed as a winner with a product the world needs — the price of Urals has, for the first time in history, briefly traded above Brent, when usually it is on average USD 10 below. It can also demonstrate that it has friends in high places. That, along with the return of their flag to the Paralympics for the first time in 12 years, and upcoming participation in Venice Biennale — against the protests of 22 European countries and threats from the European Commission to withdraw funding from the Biennale Foundation — changes the narrative from international leper to mover and shaker. At least outwardly. Although perception matters.

Sport has always been Russia’s preferred stage for exerting influence and showcasing its prowess. Culture is the other. And both are well established tools of Russian soft power and disinformation.

So, yes, this does affect Russia. At the moment the impact is helping more with their narratives, but should more Russian oil be liberated from the confines of virtual and literal Siberia, it can turn into a considerable financial victory as well.

On the one hand, the US and Israel have just bombed Iran ostensibly to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons (amongst other explanations). On the other, France has just opened talks for extending their nuclear umbrella over other countries.

Both are the result of the failure to enforce international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Countries that want to attack their neighbours and have nuclear weapons now are virtually untouchable. Which leaves countries that have not yet been attacked by their neighbour in the position of having to shop around for the fastest option to acquire them or hope to sit this out under a collective nuclear umbrella. In current circumstances, having no recourse to nuclear defence might be dangerous.

Why only some states have nuclear weapons

After the second world war which effectively ended when the US dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, four more countries emerged as the holders of this powerful weapon (whether or not they came up with the science on their own, had help or even pilfered other states’ discoveries is immaterial). They, that is USA, USSR, UK, France, and China, agreed that these weapons were too dangerous for everybody to have them, and therefore only the countries that by 1967 had performed the nuclear tests and as a result acquired nuclear weapons should be allowed to keep them.

To that end, a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was drawn up and signed. It established the nuclear states at the time and prohibited them from giving the nuclear know-how or weapons themselves to non-nuclear states. Because NATO nuclear sharing arrangements predated the NPT and did not involve peacetime transfer of control, they were treated as compatible with the treaty under the interpretation adopted by the United States and its allies.

Currently, only five states are not party to the NPT. North Korea, which joined, withdrew and then secretly obtained nuclear capabilities in 2006. India which never signed the NPT. Pakistan, when India became a nuclear state. And Israel, which officially does not have any nuclear weapons, but according to the legend “will use them if they have to”. Oh, and South Sudan. Because they are a new state and have not had time for it yet.

There was, however, another state that had nuclear weapons. And it gave them up without external pressure. It was South Africa. In 1991, South Africa dismantled not only its apartheid regime, but nuclear programme as well. To this day, it remains the only country to have dismantled an operational nuclear arsenal.

When the USSR disintegrated in 1991, its vast nuclear stockpiles were shared between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. In 1994, the latter three signed parallel security assurance memoranda in Budapest in exchange for joining the NPT as non-nuclear states. Their borders and sovereignty were assured by Russia, USA, and the UK, and later France and China added their own assurances.

It seemed to work so well, so what actually happened?

Although there were various incidents, not least the Cuban Missile Crisis, those with nuclear weapons and those without had come to an understanding that they can never be used again. And if the moral side of the argument weakened over time, everybody agreed that using nuclear weapons was not just reckless, but also simply pointless. Use of them by one country would immediately cause a return strike from the other nuclear state. In practice, nuclear deterrence logic meant nuclear use was understood as escalation between nuclear states.

The first nail in the nuclear non-proliferation coffin came in 2014, when the state that had assured the security of a country that surrendered its nuclear arsenal invaded it and annexed its sovereign land. In other words, when Russia annexed Crimea and invaded East of Ukraine.

Not only did the Budapest Memorandum which was the poster child of post-Cold War world fail, it also became clear that handing nuclear weapons and their carriers to another nuclear nation who had the potent to invade you increases the danger element exponentially.

Nail number two emerged when following the full scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine, nuclear Russia broke the taboo and threatened non-nuclear Ukraine with nuclear annihilation. And it was not the Russian actions that were the most telling, but those of the other nuclear states. Under the logic of the non-proliferation regime, it was their moral responsibility to deal with the rogue state threatening a non-nuclear treaty member. And they did not.

And nail number three, as the example with Russia shows, materialised because nuclear states can now use their arsenal as a shield for conventional aggression; they can threaten you with nuclear weapons if you even think about retaliating against their invasion. Or, what’ s even worse, they can threaten other nations who would otherwise come to your aid. This level of threat is real and visceral, whereas international “consequences” like sanctions are not.

Where does that leave us now?

At least Europe has had what you can call the front row seats to the story that demonstrates what happens when a non-nuclear state finds itself in close proximity to a nuclear one that has designs on its statehood. It has become clear that international law has virtually stopped working.

Russia can continue killing Ukrainians without facing proportionate punishment. They still sit on the UN Security Council with full veto power. The law cannot punish the person who is in charge of the police.

At the moment, if you border or are very close to Russia or any other revanchist power, you are either under a collective nuclear umbrella or you must urgently look into acquiring nuclear weapons of your own. These are the choices.

Considering that there are still quite a few non-nuclear countries in Russia’s immediate vicinity and that the Russian empire in all its iterations has historically used military force against most of them, these states are feeling exceedingly uncomfortable. Especially because the guarantees they thought they had from the nuclear umbrella provided by the US might no longer be effective. Then, of course, the other states next to revisionist neighbours are South Korea and Japan, whose reliance on American support in the new conditions of uncertainty has become equally debatable.

Most of Russia’s neighbours and many other countries in the world are therefore at the very least considering the idea of going nuclear. Of course, the path from a non-nuclear state to becoming nuclear is even more dangerous, as evident from the developments in Iran. However, if going nuclear happens en masse, it is highly unlikely that several operations like the one we witnessed in Iran could be repeated in various parts of the world at more or less the same time. Nuclear powers can stop one candidate at a time, but a collective ascension to nuclear status might be an entirely different school of fish.

Why France can delay the inevitable stampede

Although the UK maintains formal operational control over its nuclear deterrent, the Trident system depends heavily on US technology, maintenance, and missile supply. While we are told that the US is not in possession of the proverbial kill switch, the level of influence is such that, if the US wanted, it could in theory scupper the UK nuclear deployment — or so critics argue.

France, on the other hand, very early in the post-WWII period decided to maintain strategic independence in all things military. As a result, their nuclear arsenal is wholly sovereign in its operational control. As a result, France can extend entirely independent and fully European nuclear protection to all the interested parties East of France whose geographic position can make them a subject of Russian geopolitical interests. Extending deterrence would not create a new nuclear state, merely widen an existing shield.

The protection this provides to the vulnerable states might be enough to slow down the nuclear proliferation for a while. At least in Europe.

We are here now

We have moved from a world where nuclear weapons were close to unusable to a world where being friends with somebody with nuclear weapons is essential for one’s survival.

If or when the world becomes more reliant on brute strength and less on rules, many states will want to acquire nuclear weapons of their own. And from their perspective, who could really blame them if that is the only guarantee of their sovereignty?

How quickly we reach this stage largely depends on whether international law can be enforced again. Because in the absence of international law, small and medium size states might have to think more about their own safety and less about how more nuclear weapons are going to influence the rest of the world.

One of the subjects regularly discussed in connection with the war in Ukraine is elections. For most people elections are just that – elections, no big deal. To others they are the only proof of democracy. In reality, elections in Ukraine are a weapon, a shield, a pitfall, and a nuclear bomb all in one.

This analysis applies specifically to Ukraine due to the horizontal character of its society. In other societies, where power flows vertically, other considerations would apply.

Why elections cannot be held during the war?

The usual explanation covers the security aspect. When bombs rain down on people’s heads, it is difficult to get to a voting booth. However, the reality is more complicated. The full institutional, legal and security architecture is a maze worth explaining in full. So, let’s start from the beginning.

Safety

The safety issue is the most obvious one and has been discussed extensively. When a country is under regular missile and drone attack, concentrating civilians in predictable locations creates risk. Polling stations, queues, and counting centres become fixed targets.

Can the state guarantee that a gathering of voters will not become a target for Russian attacks? Probably not, even if assurances are given. No country has held national elections during an ongoing large-scale foreign invasion in which a regular army is actively fighting to conquer and annex its territory. Special measures would therefore be required — measures going well beyond standard electoral security planning.

Security

Security is different from safety. Safety concerns the electorate on election day. Security concerns the entire election process from the moment elections are called. Safety affects the voters, security affects their vote.

Ukraine would require special measures to protect the integrity of its electoral process from external interference — at a level few countries have had to consider. Voter registries, result transmission systems, and certification procedures would all become targets.

In a country where state services and identification are digitised and accessible through mobile platforms, the number of potential entry points for cyber intrusion is significant. An active adversary does not need to destroy ballots to undermine an election; it only needs to compromise trust in the process.

Who will vote

Having the right to vote is not the same as having the opportunity to vote. Nor does the right to vote mean it cannot be weaponised by the enemy.

Ukrainians living in Ukrainian-controlled territory, including internally displaced persons, can in principle be enfranchised. The state controls the territory and can organise polling there, even if additional expense is required to maintain an updated electoral register while houses are being bombed on a daily basis and people are forced to move.

Ukrainians abroad retain the right to vote, but in practice only those within reasonable physical proximity to embassies or consulates would be able to exercise it. The rest would hold a formal right without a realistic opportunity.

Ukrainians in Russian-occupied territories present a different problem. Voting cannot be organised there without placing the process under the control or influence of a foreign army. Excluding them, however, creates its own legitimacy questions.

Ukrainians currently in Russia proper cannot be enfranchised in any meaningful way during active war, or indeed during any period while Russia remains an enemy to Ukrainian statehood. No polling infrastructure can be deployed on enemy territory.

An election held under these conditions would therefore involve only part of the electorate and would violate the electoral rights of millions of people.

How will voting happen physically?

Even if the question of who may vote is resolved, the question of how they vote remains.

Inside Ukraine, large areas not under Russian occupation have suffered extensive destruction. Schools, administrative buildings and local infrastructure — the usual locations for polling stations — no longer exist in many towns. Temporary facilities would have to be created, secured and staffed under conditions of ongoing attack.

Abroad, the problem is scale. Ukrainian embassies and consulates were never designed to process millions of voters. Physical voting through diplomatic missions would create bottlenecks. Expanding the number of polling locations would require negotiations with host states, additional staffing, secure ballot transport, extended administrative capacity, and large-scale security operations to prevent sabotage and other forms of hybrid interference.

Who can stand for election?

An election is not only about voters. It is also about candidates.

For an election to be fair, there cannot be structural restrictions on who is able to stand.

A significant portion of Ukrainian society is mobilised. Active military personnel cannot leave their posts to campaign, travel, participate in debates, or build political organisations. In practice, they are excluded from meaningful candidacy while mobilisation remains in force.

The military is one of the most trusted institutions in the country and represents a large and politically significant segment of society. In post-war elections, they will most likely replace much of the existing ruling class.

Holding elections without demobilisation would effectively deny candidacy rights to an entire stratum of prospective political actors.

Demobilisation, however, is impossible without a credible reduction in military threat. Unless Russia suddenly disappears from the map, large-scale demobilisation may not be realistic for many years. This places any wartime election in direct tension with equal access to political participation.

Campaigning

Elections are not a technical exercise. They require political competition, and they are adversarial by nature.

While on the campaign trail, candidates expose weaknesses, assign blame, question competence, and amplify failures. In peacetime this is normal. In wartime, it attacks the very basis on which the Ukrainian nation builds its resistance — cohesion between society, the army, and political leadership.

A national campaign would mean open season on strategic decisions, battlefield outcomes, casualty figures, procurement disputes and mobilisation fatigue.

Campaigning also requires answers. Candidates would be pressed on matters that touch on state secrets — information the enemy does not yet possess and could use to inflict mass civilian casualties.

An enemy would have a field day amplifying existing disputes, circulating fabricated material, or injecting targeted narratives.

Campaigning creates a moment of internal vulnerability — precisely the kind Russia has been trying, unsuccessfully, to manufacture through targeted attacks on civilians. By forcing elections during active war, Russia might achieve politically what it has failed to achieve on the battlefield.

Wartime requires a trade-off. The state can provide either internal political freedom or the collective strength required to resist an external enemy. It cannot fully provide both at the same time.

Public consent

Polling conducted throughout the war has consistently shown that a clear majority of Ukrainians oppose holding elections during active hostilities. Elections are seen as destabilising and therefore dangerous while the country is under attack.

Support for the current leadership must be understood in that context. Whether Ukrainians support Zelenskyy in peacetime is a separate matter. During war, they support the President of Ukraine as the figure representing the state in a war against an invading force. It happens to be Zelenskyy. Approval ratings for the president have remained high by democratic standards and have tended to rise when external actors publicly criticise or pressure him.

Ukrainians reserve the right to criticise their own leadership. When criticism comes from outside during wartime, society closes ranks, reinforcing legitimacy.

Postponing elections, therefore, is not an act against public will; it reflects it. In a society where power flows horizontally, not vertically, no leader can sustain authority without broad social backing.

Until active warfare ends, elections could only be triggered by sustained external pressure. Such pressure would likely be interpreted not as democratic encouragement but as an existential attack. In that case, Ukrainians would most likely respond by consolidating around the incumbent, re-electing Zelenskyy as an act of national defence rather than routine political choice.

Legal framework

Under Ukraine’s legal framework, national elections cannot be held while martial law remains in force. The Constitution and electoral legislation suspend the electoral process during periods of martial law.

Mobilisation is legally tied to martial law. The authority to compel service rests on that framework. If martial law were lifted, the legal basis for compulsory mobilisation would disappear, and those mobilised — as opposed to voluntary contract soldiers — would have the right to demobilise. The army could not be sustained in its current form.

Demobilisation, however, is possible only in times of peace — proper, long-term peace, when the neighbouring country does not present any danger. It is very difficult to envision a version of the future in which Ukraine feels safe enough from Russia for that to happen.

This creates a structural impasse: martial law cannot be lifted without triggering demobilisation; elections cannot resume while martial law remains.

In addition, elections cannot simply be declared and held within weeks. Under Ukrainian law, there must be at least 55 days between the completion of candidate registration and election day. Based on previous electoral cycles, the candidate registration process itself has lasted approximately 35 days.

Whether active warfare would make that process faster or slower is unclear. Logically, it would be more complicated. In any case, even under optimistic assumptions, national elections could not realistically be held earlier than roughly 90 days from the date they are announced.

Changing this situation would require amending the Constitution. The Constitution cannot be amended while martial law is in place. Any attempt to devise alternative legal mechanisms to bypass these restraints would immediately open the door to challenges of legitimacy. Such measures would provide ready-made grounds for questioning both the election process and its results.

Conclusion

There is a reason why no country has held national elections during an active full-scale invasion by a neighbouring state. The quagmire this presents — legally, militarily, from a security and safety perspective — is difficult to overstate.

Any changes to legislation allowing elections under current conditions would be contested by some parties, and so would the results of such elections. The threat of physical harm to voters from possible aerial attacks, enemy terrorist plots and sabotage cannot be fully mitigated.

The fact that only part of Ukrainian citizens would be able to vote would add further grounds for those inclined to treat the elections as illegitimate. The wrecking-ball effect that campaigning would have on a society whose every nerve is already stretched to the limit would cause incalculable harm to Ukrainian unity and spirit.

Ukrainians understand this better than anyone else, which is why they resist such demands from outside. It is not the political class that rejects the notion of elections during a full-scale war. It is society as a whole.