Former President Petro Poroshenko said on April 2 he plans to run for the presidential office again, but only once the war with Russia ends.
"If you ask me if I plan to participate in the next election, (then) yes," Poroshenko told Al Jazeera.
"But first, for this election, we need to have a victory," he added. Poroshenko also said that he plans to run for the European Parliament elections when Ukraine enters the EU.
The next presidential vote was to be held in 2024, but martial law, declared in 2022 in response to Russia's full-scale invasion, does not allow for holding elections.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in December 2023 that he was willing to proceed with the election as scheduled but believed that most Ukrainians think such a vote would be "dangerous and meaningless" in wartime.
According to a survey released on Feb. 20 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), almost 70% of Ukrainians think that Zelensky should remain in office for the duration of martial law.
Poroshenko served one term as Ukraine's president from 2014 until 2019. Zelensky dealt a decisive defeat to Poroshenko in the 2019 election, securing 73.22% of the vote against his opponent's 24.45% in the second round.
