Democracy under fire: rhetorical accountability and wartime governance in Ukraine

Russia’s full-scale invasion has made Ukraine a critical case for examining democratic governance under conditions of protracted war. This article analyzes how accountability can persist despite centralized authority and martial law. It argues that as the conflict becomes routinized – shifting from emergency mobilization to more stable patterns of warfare – opportunities for political contestation re-emerge. Building on Ronald Krebs’s theory of wartime rhetoric, the article extends his framework by specifying the conditions under which rights-protective backlash becomes politically operative and the mechanism through which opposition and civic actors translate perceived inconsistencies between democratic commitments and executive practice into accountability pressures. Drawing on institutional, discursive, and participatory evidence from 2023 to 2025, the analysis traces four episodes in which these dynamics encouraged selective policy adjustment. The findings show that democratic commitments can constrain executive authority even in a hybrid regime confronting existential war. By extending Krebs’s framework to an ongoing defensive conflict, the article demonstrates how rights-protective backlash can sustain bounded but meaningful forms of democratic accountability.