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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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In America we had an election in the middle of our civil war

This is an irrelevant argument. It is as relevant to the current situation as a point than ancient Athenians had elections during Peloponnesian War. A better (since more recent) parallel is the suspension of elections by UK during WWII. It is definitely easier to conduct elections before the age of bombers and missiles hitting your polling stations.

However, what matters is that elections are suspended during the state of war according to the Ukrainian Constitution. Lifting the state of war would be criminally stupid when there is an ongoing war (the state of war allows some actions that are illegal during peace, like having a firing positions in private property by the military). Surely, there can be some legal trickery, like rolling suspension of state of war or some other legal tricks but this will not make it any more democratic that what it is now and there is still a matter of missiles raining from the sky. I would not like to see a headline "Presidential elections conducted in Ukraine. 25 dead, 150 injured, and 25,000 ballots destroyed in fires".