(Bloomberg) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who campaigned on a promise to lead for just one term, said he’d consider a second as the challenges facing his country have grown.
“I’ll think about a second term,” Zelenskiy told a news conference Wednesday in Kyiv marking his first year in the job. “One term won’t be enough to complete the whole list” of tasks that have emerged.
Zelenskiy, a comedian with no political background, won a landslide election victory on pledges to fight corruption, raise living standards and end the Kremlin-backed conflict that erupted after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
But his first 12 months included significant challenges. First, he was an unwitting player in the U.S. impeachment saga, which centered around a phone call with President Donald Trump over military aid. There was also the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane by an Iranian missile in Tehran in January.
Zelenskiy has sought to make progress on ending the war in regions on the Russian border, but has so far only managed to arrange prisoner swaps between the former allies. Corruption remains a hot-button issue and a purge of reformers from the government this year hurt Zelenskiy’s popularity.
Still, Zelenskiy remains Ukraine’s most popular politician, with a poll by the Rating Group finding that 31% of people consider his first year good or excellent, 37% satisfactory and 31% unsatisfactory.
Zelenskiy said Wednesday that a second term could be needed to complete reforms and important projects, citing an overhaul of the medical system and infrastructure plans -- both of which he promised during his campaign.
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