What Does It Benefit Zelensky and His Team to End the War in Ukraine When an End Could Jeopardize Their Hold on Power.

 

The question of whether wartime leaders possess incentives to prolong conflict is neither unique to Ukraine nor reducible to the motives of a single individual. Throughout history, wars have altered the normal relationship between governments and citizens, concentrating authority in the executive, suspending ordinary political competition, and reframing public debate around national survival rather than domestic governance.

Viewed through this lens, the question is not whether President Volodymyr Zelensky consciously wishes to prolong the war, but whether the political and psychological structures created by war generate incentives that make peace politically risky. The answer is complex, involving three overlapping dimensions: political incentives, strategic imperatives, and psychological identity.

War Creates Power; Peace Restores Accountability

One of the most consistent findings in political science is that war tends to centralise power. During major conflicts, governments acquire extraordinary authority, opposition activity is constrained, and public attention shifts away from domestic grievances toward collective survival.

In Ukraine, martial law has suspended normal electoral politics. Opposition parties cannot campaign in the usual manner, public discourse is dominated by military developments, and international support is channelled through the existing government. Like many wartime leaders before him, Zelensky has become both a political leader and a national symbol.

Peace would reverse many of these conditions. Elections would return. Political rivals would re-emerge. Public attention would shift toward inflation, reconstruction costs, corruption allegations, military losses, and economic hardship. The protective environment created by wartime unity would gradually give way to ordinary democratic competition.

This dynamic is not unique to Ukraine. It reflects a broader historical pattern: war concentrates authority; peace disperses it.

The Political Incentive Hypothesis

The first framework argues that wartime governance provides structural advantages to incumbents.

Under this interpretation, war offers several political benefits. It delays electoral competition, limits the ability of opponents to mobilise, reinforces the image of the leader as a national defender, and strengthens international legitimacy. Criticism of government decisions may also be perceived as undermining national morale, creating additional political insulation.

By contrast, peace exposes governments to renewed scrutiny. Economic frustrations become politically salient. Military decisions are reassessed. Corruption investigations regain prominence. New contenders emerge and seek office.

From a purely institutional perspective, the end of the war would place Zelensky and his administration back under the gravitational forces of normal democratic politics. This does not prove a desire to continue the conflict. It merely illustrates that wartime conditions create advantages that peace inevitably removes.

The State Survival Hypothesis

A second interpretation reaches a very different conclusion.

According to this view, the central concern of the Ukrainian government is not political survival but state survival. The danger lies not in ending the war itself, but in ending it under conditions that leave Ukraine vulnerable.

A negotiated settlement perceived as capitulation could destabilise domestic politics and weaken public trust in the state. Territorial concessions might undermine the legitimacy of any government that accepted them. A frozen conflict could leave Ukraine exposed to future military pressure while complicating long-term integration with European institutions.

Under this framework, continuing the war is not about preserving power but about avoiding what leaders perceive to be an unacceptable peace. The primary objective is national security rather than political advantage.

Whether one agrees with that assessment is a separate question. The point is that leaders may see continuation of the conflict as the lesser of two strategic risks.

The Reality of Mixed Motives

Political leaders rarely act from a single motive. More commonly, they operate within a landscape of competing incentives.

A wartime government may simultaneously seek to defend national sovereignty, achieve military success, avoid responsibility for an unfavourable settlement, and maintain its political position. These objectives can reinforce one another at certain moments and conflict sharply at others.

For this reason, explanations based solely on either self-interest or patriotism are usually incomplete. Political behaviour is often driven by a mixture of both.

The most realistic interpretation is therefore not that Zelensky is motivated exclusively by personal power, nor that political considerations play no role at all. Rather, he operates within a system where national and political interests are deeply intertwined.

The Psychoanalytic Dimension

Political analysis explains incentives; psychoanalysis attempts to explain identity.

Drawing on the work of Sigmund Freud, one may ask how prolonged wartime leadership reshapes the leader's sense of self.

The Heroic Identity

War grants leaders a powerful symbolic role. Zelensky has become internationally associated with resistance, national endurance, and collective defiance.

Peace threatens this identity. The heroic wartime figure must eventually become an ordinary political leader once again—subject to compromise, criticism, bureaucratic constraints, and electoral competition.

In Freudian terms, this can be understood as a challenge to the ego ideal: the internal image of oneself as uniquely necessary, courageous, and historically significant.

The Fear of Power Loss

Freud frequently associated anxiety with the loss of potency and agency.

Politically translated, war confers urgency, authority, and global attention. Peace restores vulnerability to criticism and competition. A leader need not consciously desire war for the unconscious mind to experience peace as a reduction in symbolic power.

This is not an accusation. It is a structural observation about the psychology of leadership.

The Return of Internal Conflict

War simplifies collective identity. The nation is united against an external threat.

Peace reintroduces internal divisions. Political disagreements that were temporarily suppressed return to the foreground. Debates over economic policy, corruption, social values, military strategy, and constitutional reform once again become central.

The clarity of wartime solidarity gives way to the ambiguity of democratic pluralism.

From Destruction to Reconstruction

Freud described a tension between destructive and creative drives. Whether or not one accepts the terminology, the broader insight remains relevant: wartime leadership and peacetime leadership require fundamentally different psychological orientations.

The leader who excels at mobilising resistance is not necessarily the leader best suited to reconstruction. Transitioning from one role to the other can be politically and psychologically difficult.

What Does Zelensky Gain by Ending the War?

Despite the political risks, peace also offers substantial potential rewards.

A successful conclusion to the conflict would allow Zelensky to shape Ukraine's reconstruction, guide institutional reform, strengthen European integration, and secure a place in history as the leader who preserved Ukrainian sovereignty during its gravest crisis.

In this sense, losing a future election may be less significant than securing a lasting historical legacy. Leaders are often remembered less for how long they remained in office than for the condition in which they left their country.

Conclusion

The relationship between war and political power presents a genuine paradox.

Ending the war would likely increase political risks for Zelensky and his administration. Elections would return, opposition would revive, and public scrutiny would intensify. In that sense, wartime conditions undeniably provide advantages to incumbents.

Yet it does not follow that these advantages are sufficient reason to prolong the conflict. A prolonged or unsuccessful war carries its own political dangers, including military exhaustion, economic decline, and the erosion of public support. Moreover, any durable political legacy depends ultimately on the survival and stability of the state itself.

The most convincing explanation is therefore neither cynical nor idealistic. Zelensky appears to be situated at the intersection of three powerful forces: the political incentives generated by war, the strategic demands of national survival, and the psychological identity of a wartime leader.

Peace threatens his power. Continued war threatens his country. And in the long run, the latter threatens his power as well.

That tension is not unique to Ukraine. It is one of the enduring dilemmas of wartime leadership throughout history.