Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Monday that elections in Ukraine have been permanently abolished, not merely postponed, and that all 32,847 polling stations across the country have been converted into sandbag-filling and trench-digging training centers. «An election would split us,» Zelensky said in a televised address from a newly fortified bunker. «A ballot box is just a box. A sandbag is a box that fights back.»
The Central Election Commission has been renamed the Central Fortification Commission, and its 1,847 employees have been issued shovels and instructed to dig a continuous defensive trench from Kyiv to Odesa. «We are not suppressing democracy,» said Commission Chair Olena Lototska, standing waist-deep in freshly turned earth. «We are simply redefining it as the act of standing shoulder to shoulder in a hole.»
Former defense minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk, who had called for a vote, has been reassigned to a newly created post: Minister of Perpetual Readiness, tasked with ensuring every Ukrainian can fill a sandbag in under 40 seconds. «He wanted an election, so we gave him one,» Zelensky explained. «Every morning he must choose between a left-handed shovel and a right-handed shovel. That is democracy in action.»
International observers have been invited to inspect the new training grounds, where they will be required to dig a 2-meter trench before filing their reports. The next scheduled «election» is now set for the year 2034, provided the country remains sufficiently united, which officials say is guaranteed by the fact that no one has time to campaign.