Ukraine has been rocked after a sacked defence minister called for wartime elections. Mykhailo Fedorov, who was ousted earlier this year, said the country faced a “crisis of governance” and demanded that presidential elections be held soon.In a video address, the popular former minister said democracy “cannot be held hostage by Russia”.“We must find a legal, safe and realistic mechanism that will allow Ukraine to renew its full democratic process even in the conditions of a long war,” he said.The bold demand is the first of its kind and is being viewed as the first serious leadership challenge to President Volodymyr Zelensky since Russia launched a bloody, full-scale invasion in 2022.Mr Federov was a close ally of Mr Zelensky until he was fired from the defence ministry in July.He is often credited with bolstering Ukraine’s drone capacity and their use in targeting oil refineries and logistics warehouses in Russia.He is the only defence minister to lay out a strategy to defeat Moscow through attrition and technological superiority, according to the ABC.His sacking in July led to street protests and the eventual dismissal of bitter rival and critic, Oleksandr Syrskyi, the then commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. Mr Fedorov hasn’t said if he’ll stand in an election; however, recent polling suggests he could easily beat Mr Zelensky in a runoff vote.But wartime elections don’t appear to be popular with the public. An August poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found 57 per cent of Ukrainians believed elections should be held after the war, given hundreds of thousands of troops were on the front line.There is also the logistical challenge of trying to distribute voting cards to millions of Ukrainians living as refugees overseas, as well as those displaced within the country and to those serving in the military, according to the European Policy Institute in Kyiv, Lesia Bidochko.“Currently, it looks like an elegant way of occupying the opposition space without taking responsibility for the mechanics,” she said.Mr Zelensky’s office had no immediate comment on Mr Fedorov’s address.According to the ABC, Mr Fedorov’s statement came mere hours after the new defence minister, Yevhenii Khmara, a former top special forces operative, was appointed.It comes as strikes killed 19 people in Russia and Ukraine, authorities said Sunday, as waves of drones and missiles pummelled civilian infrastructure on both sides.With fighting at the front at a near standstill and talks frozen, the warring countries have significantly stepped up long-range attacks deep behind each other’s lines, pushing the civilian death toll to its highest levels since the war’s first months in 2022. In Russia, swarms of Ukrainian drones killed five people in a residential area of the southern Rostov region, regional governor Yuri Slusar said.Three more people were killed in the Belgorod, Kursk and Moscow regions, along with four others in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia. Moscow’s regional governor Andrey Vorobyov described the assault as “one of the most massive drone attacks in recent memory”. Russia’s defence ministry said it had intercepted 822 drones across the country overnight.In Ukraine, a barrage of Russian drones and missiles killed two people and wounded 14 at ArcelorMittal’s steel plant in Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown.The plant, one of Ukraine’s biggest steel producers, said it partially halted operations after the strike damaged its core production facilities.Another strike hit Kryvyi Rih on Sunday evening, killing one person.Strikes also hit other regions, killing two people in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, one in the border region of Sumy and another in Donetsk in the east.