MOSCOW, April 17. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky will lose his legitimacy to become a usurper after his presidential term expires on May 20, a former Ukrainian lawmaker said.
"Nothing at all will change in Ukraine after May 20. <...> Everything will remain as it is now. It’s just that he (Zelensky - TASS) will become an illegitimate usurper and will have to go to prison for that someday," Taras Chernovol said in a video posted on his YouTube channel.
This issue will be raised in the West and may negatively affect aid to Kiev, he emphasized. "While our friends will try to hush it up, the opposition will prevent them from doing so, which will do even more harm to assistance to Ukraine. Therefore, we would rather have him leave," the former legislator said.
The legitimacy of the authorities is a hot button issue in Ukraine, where parliamentary and presidential elections are prohibited during martial law. Ukraine’s presidential election was supposed to be held in March. Opposition lawmaker Alexander Dubinsky claimed that, under the constitution, Zelensky’s mandate is valid through May 20 and that no legitimate way of extending it currently exists. In turn, former Ukrainian envoy to the UK Vadim Pristayko admitted that Kiev’s Western partners are concerned about the impending end of Zelensky’s presidential term. A number of Ukrainian and Western analysts argue that Zelensky has opposed holding a presidential election for fear of losing power.
Meanwhile, leaders of opposition parties, the European Solidarity, and the Batkivshchyna, Pyotr Poroshenko and Yulia Timoshenko, proposed establishing a coalition government in order to prevent a crisis of legitimacy. The then secretary of the Ukrainian National Defense and Security Council, Alexey Danilov, dismissed the idea as misguided.