DISINFO: Ukraine will officially cease to exist on 29 August 2024
SUMMARY
Given that Zelenskyy’s term of office has expired and on 29 August, the term of the Ukrainian parliament is expiring, Ukraine as a country will cease to exist. It will not have either legislative or executive branches of power. This unique situation gives Viktor Yanukovich a unique historical chance to conclusively make Malorossiya part of Russia.
RESPONSE
This is an expanded version of the frequent disinformation claim about the end of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s legal term of office, a more detailed debunk of which is available here. According to Ukrainian legislation, no elections can be held during wartime. This legal norm received explicit approval from all political parties represented in the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada). In November 2023, they signed a memorandum in which they agreed to postpone holding elections until after martial law has ended. The date of August 29, 2024, is likely highlighted because the deputies elected in the July 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election were inaugurated on this date in 2019.
This disinformation is also an example of recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about the Russian world and Ukrainian statehood. The article absurdly suggests that Ukraine as a country will cease to exist due to the alleged termination of presidential and parliamentary terms in office. In line with Russian imperial naming practice, Ukraine is called Malorossiya. The "all-Russian nation" is an imperial Russian and Russian revanchist ideology that is a favoured pro-Kremlin narrative aimed at weakening the national identity of Ukrainians, as well as their sovereignty. Ukraine is a well-defined nation-state with a long history and its own literature and identity, despite foreign rule for long periods of time. Nowadays, Ukraine is bravely defending itself, its territorial integrity, national self-identity and sovereignty against Russia's armed aggression.
The article also absurdly implies that the former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych has the legal authority and legitimacy to decide on Ukraine’s future. In January 2019, a Ukrainian court found Yanukovych guilty of high treason and complicity in the Russian military intervention in Ukraine.
See earlier similar disinformation cases claiming that Ukraine has always been Russian, Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians are a single nation, that Zelenskyy is illegitimate and therefore Russia is directly fighting the West, that the prolonged war allows Zelenskyy and his junta to maintain their positions of power, and that Zelenskyy staged a coup d'état for fear of losing the 2024 presidential elections.