Volodymyr Zelensky 'to announce presidential election in just DAYS' after extended seven-year term in charge

Ukraine has not held an election since then due to the war.

According to the FT, Mr Zelensky is looking to hold the national vote in May - as well as a referendum on a peace deal with Vladimir Putin.

And he could be voted out of office, bringing an end to his extended spell in charge.

In the latest nationwide opinion poll by Ipsos, he trailed independent Valerii Zaluzhnyi - his ambassador to the UK - by three percentage points.

The move follows pressure from the US to hold both votes by May 15 - or risk losing crucial security guarantees against Russia.

Donald Trump is said to have told Kyiv that it would need to give away the Donbas to Russia in order to receive the guarantees.

But Mr Zelensky has vowed that Ukraine "will stand where we stand".

Ukrainian election authorities have projected that it would take around six months to run an election under current conditions.

"The Americans are in a hurry," a source familiar with the matter told Reuters, adding that a vote could be organised in fewer than six months, but it would still take a substantial amount of time.

While Mr Zelensky himself said last week: "They say they want to do everything by June... so that the war ends. They want a clear schedule."

He pointed to the looming US midterms as a reason why Mr Trump may want to turn his eyes away from foreign affairs and get to grips with his domestic campaign.

Holding an election would need a number of changes to Ukrainian legislation - as such votes are prohibited during martial law.

The country also faces the fact that millions of people have been displaced, some of them abroad - while as much as a fifth of its land is under Russian control.

Kyiv's Mayor Vitali Klitschko told the FT: "Political competition during the war is bad... We can destroy the country from the inside, which is Russia's goal."

Ukraine wants a ceasefire throughout the voting campaign to protect the referendum's integrity.

But authorities worry that Russia could break its word - and has a history of going back on agreed-upon halts in fighting, one of the sources said.

Olha Aivazovska, of the Ukrainian democracy think tank Opora, warned that Russian drones could put the vote in peril too.

The cheap but deadly flying machines "put polling stations across Ukraine under threat", she said.