1. War is not confined to eastern regions, it never was, even in 2014.
2. Elections and freedom of speech, also freedom of movement, freedom of association and a lot of other freedoms are suspended for the duration of martial law being in effect, that's part of the law. Changes to constitution, referendums, strikes are prohibited as well. Law #389-vii (may 12, 2015) itself is powered by Constitution (article 64 part 2 mentions what freedoms can't be suspended during martial law). All previous iterations of the law starting from 2000, I think, have +- same conditions and change mostly in wording.
3. Civil war was civil as in not against outside threat and it wasn't an existential threat. Stated r*ssian goals include genocide.

Hm. Interesting, thank you, I hadn't known they had cancelled the election.

Presidential elections were scheduled to be held in Ukraine in March or April 2024. However, as martial law has been in effect since 24 February 2022 in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, no elections were held because Ukrainian law does not allow presidential elections to be held when martial law is in effect.

Apart from the legal prohibition, both government and opposition politicians in Ukraine questioned the feasibility of a 2024 election, citing concerns over security and displaced voters[2][13] as the Russian invasion continued. Russia controls 18% of Ukraine's territory as of October 2024,[14] and nearly 14 million Ukrainians have either fled abroad or been displaced internally.[2][13][9] Other challenges identified include danger to voters and likely disruption of the voting process[9] due to Russian bombardment;[15] the inability of citizens in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine to vote;[15] the inability of soldiers to vote or run as candidates;[13] damaged polling infrastructure;[13] an outdated voter registry that has not been updated to reflect millions of displaced voters;[9] expanded state powers and restricted rights under martial law that would limit campaigning[9] and prevent fair competition for opposition candidates;[16] and the lack of funds.[13]

A poll released by KIIS in October 2023 reported that 81% of Ukrainians did not want elections until the war was over,[17] and more than 200 civil society institutions, NGOs, and human rights groups have formally opposed wartime elections.[15] In November 2023, Zelenskyy said "now is not the right time for elections", in response to a claim by European Solidarity MP Oleksiy Goncharenko that Zelenskyy had decided to hold elections on 31 March 2024.[18] Later in November, all political parties represented in the Verkhovna Rada signed a document in which they agreed to postpone holding any national election until after the end of martial law[19] and agreed to work on a special law that would regulate the first post-war election, which would take place no earlier than six months after the cancellation of martial law.[20]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Ukrainian_presidential_election

The situation during the civil war was a little different. They didn't attempt to count votes from the "occupied" territories, meaning it was basically an election of the union states only, and almost all the still-alive voting population was either still at home, or deployed in the military and findable. Almost all the fighting and destruction was inside the CSA, not on union territory, so there wasn't the same massive scale of destruction and disruption in the union that Ukraine is under. The union cancelling elections would have been more like Russia cancelling elections because of the Ukraine war.

I'm not trying to debate about it, I just don't know much about it. The infringements on press freedoms sound pretty real. And, the CSA did have congressional elections during the war, although they didn't last long enough to have a second presidential election.