Will Volodymyr Zelenskyy be the next leader out before 2027?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said publicly that he would step down if that were the price of NATO membership for Ukraine. That statement — a sitting wartime president explicitly floating his own resignation as a negotiating chip — is the most analytically distinctive thing about his contract and separates it from every other leader-risk market in the basket. Most leader-exit contracts price electoral cycles or institutional instability. Zelenskyy's prices something more specific: the probability that a war-end diplomatic package includes his departure as a term, and that it arrives before 2027. Ukraine's presidential election was postponed under martial law — the legal mechanism that has kept Zelenskyy in office past what would have been a normal electoral cycle. That postponement is politically sustainable while active combat continues and Western support remains unified behind his leadership. It becomes politically unsustainable at the moment the war shifts toward negotiated settlement, because the same Western allies who support martial law delays will face domestic pressure to insist on democratic normalization as a condition of reconstruction packages and NATO integration. The successor conversation is already active in Ukrainian and Western policy circles. Valerii Zaluzhny — the former military commander with approval ratings that consistently exceeded Zelenskyy's during the war — represents the most obvious transition figure. Intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov and parliamentary speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk are also discussed. A system that is actively gaming out post-Zelenskyy scenarios is a system that doesn't see his indefinite continuation as guaranteed. The hazard profile is lumpy rather than linear. Nothing changes while major combat continues and Western support holds. The probability jumps when ceasefire negotiations reach a stage where Ukrainian political normalization becomes part of the framework discussion. Bottom line: Zelenskyy's exit risk is war-termination risk, not domestic political risk. Watch ceasefire negotiation progress and any Western statements linking reconstruction or NATO timelines to Ukrainian electoral normalization — those signals move his contract more than any domestic Ukrainian political development.