Responding to a US senator’s request this week for elections in 2024, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that polling might take place during the conflict provided partners split the costs, lawmakers consented, and everyone went to the polls.

Elections cannot now be place in Ukraine owing to martial rule, which must be extended every 90 days and is set to expire on Nov. 15, beyond the customary deadline for parliamentary elections in October but before presidential elections in March 2024.

Senator Lindsey Graham, who visited Kyiv on August 23, praised Kyiv’s battle against Russian President Vladimir Putin but said the country needed to prove it was different by conducting elections during the war.

Zelenskiy, in a television interview with Natalia Moseichuk, an anchor for the 1+1 Channel, said he had discussed the issue with Graham, including the question of funding and the need to change the law.

“I gave Lindsey a very simple answer very quickly,” he said. “He was very pleased with it. As long as our legislators are willing to do it.”

He said it cost 5 billion hryvnia ($135 million) to hold elections in peacetime. “I don’t know how much is needed in wartime,” he said. “So I told him that if the US and Europe provide financial support …”

He added, “I will not take money from weapons and give it to elections. And this is stipulated by the law.”

Zelenskiy said he told Graham that election observers would have to go to the trenches. “I told him: You and I should send observers to the frontlines so that we have legitimate elections for us and for the whole world.”

Ukraine would also need help setting up additional voting access for millions of people overseas, especially from the European Union, he said.

“There is a way out,” he said. “I am ready for it.”

Graham, a Republican, told reporters during a briefing in a bunker with fellow Senators Richard Blumenthal and Elizabeth Warren, both Democrats, that his message to Zelenskiy would be they would fight to keep weapons flowing “so you can win a war that we can’t afford to lose.”

He added, “But I am also going to tell him this: You’ve got to do two things at once. We need an election in Ukraine next year. I want to see this country have a free and fair election even while it is under assault.”

Zelenskiy said those fighting Russia’s invasion would have to be included. “They are defending this democracy today, and not to give them this opportunity because of war – that is unfair. I was against the elections only because of this.”