We all remember how President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, followed by Head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak and Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk, unanimously declared through media outlets controlled by the Presidential Office that elections in Ukraine are impossible during martial law.

The narratives set by President Zelenskyy and Head of the Office Yermak about the impossibility of holding elections were eagerly picked up by pro-government Telegram channels, bloggers, journalists, and representatives of the political party “Servant of the People,” who began aggressively promoting them to Ukrainian society. The government spent enormous sums of money on pushing these narratives — funds that, by the way, could have been used to purchase drones for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. But their goal was to hammer into the minds of ordinary Ukrainians that the country is at war and that elections should be forgotten until the war ends.

Just a week later, U.S. President Donald Trump once again reminded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that there is no democracy in Ukraine and that presidential elections need to be held. And then, as they say, a miracle happened: President Zelenskyy, who had so recently assured us that martial law makes elections impossible, suddenly agreed to hold them and personally instructed the Verkhovna Rada to prepare the necessary decisions. The Verkhovna Rada, which had also recently shouted about the impossibility of elections, is now hastily holding the required meetings and already has concrete proposals and draft laws regarding the conduct of elections in Ukraine.

It’s bizarre, comical, and at the same time terrifying. Does this mean that the President and his inner circle, along with those who feed from his hand, were openly lying to Ukrainian society? As we can see, society was manipulated and fed fairy tales — until the U.S. President gave an instruction, and our authorities snapped to attention and began implementing it, disregarding everything they had previously claimed about impossibility. They had told us that the Constitution was “on pause,” that the country is at war for now, and that we must wait until the war ends.

So it turns out this was possible all along? It turns out that now government officials are no longer worried about Ukrainians exposing themselves to danger during voting — the very danger they had so recently warned about, when people would supposedly have to vote under shelling?

It becomes truly frightening when you see and understand that the government rewrites laws to suit itself, that it puts the fundamental law — the Constitution — “on pause” whenever it wishes, and that it rushes to carry out orders at the behest of another country’s president. And it is even more frightening that we, ordinary Ukrainians, are being lied to by bloggers, journalists, media outlets, politicians, and the President himself.