President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday dismissed the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, ending months of growing tension between the two leaders, POLITICO reports.
Although the general is one of the most trusted men in Ukraine due to his key role in Ukraine’s military conflict and is seen as a potential political rival to Zelensky, he was treated far less patiently in the Ukrainian army. He has also had a strained relationship with Washington, after he and US military leaders disagreed over how to conduct last year’s counter-offensive, Zaluzhny fell out of favour with Washington.
Zelensky told the White House that he intended to dismiss Zaluzhny; the US responded that it would leave that decision up to Kyiv. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has said this week:
We’ve been clear, we’re just not going to get embroiled in that particular decision. We have indicated that directly to the Ukrainian president.
For months, sharp disagreements over the state of the war between the president and his top general have been going public. The conflict between the president and the general reflected heightened tensions in Kyiv over staggering casualties in manpower, the failure of last year’s counter-offensive, and reduced supplies of Western military aid, according to POLITICO.
A senior Ukrainian military official, who, like others involved in this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said there was growing discontent among top military officials that Zaluzhny was spending “a lot of time on Facebook showing how he was doing something” while no changes were being made on the front.
Before the suspension was announced, Zaluzhny’s office was asked if the Pentagon had expressed dissatisfaction with the way he was conducting the counter-offensive and whether some Ukrainian military officials shared those concerns. His spokesman replied that they were not aware of any such concerns.
There is no getting around Zaluzhny’s critical role in the early days of the war. He rushed under-equipped units onto the battlefield to repel the offensive on Kyiv and kept Ukrainian army forces on full alert for a long time, waiting for Western assistance. Then, in late 2022, he led Ukrainian forces in a stunning counter-offensive that resulted in the recapture of some territory, POLITICO reports.
He also developed a strong relationship with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and other senior Western generals, which was crucial in securing military support for Ukraine in 2022 and 2023. Glen Grant, a former British officer and a military expert with the Riga-based Baltic Security Foundation, pointing to tensions over a stalled mobilization law, said:
The army has fought amazingly under Zaluzhny but he has been poorly supported by the government and parliament.
Austrian military analyst Tom Cooper believes that Zaluzhny has come under fire for not completing the transformation of the Ukrainian armed forces into Western-style forces, improving logistics and rotating troops away from the front line to give them a chance to rest and recuperate, rather than leaving them in the trenches for the entire war. He said:
After two years since the all-out invasion, none of these is working really well, and improvements observed so far remain relatively minimal.
Grant pointed out some management issues, though it’s impossible to say who was at fault. He said:
Some of the weakest generals have been kept and better ones left idle. It is not clear whose fault this is. Zaluzhny is the best motivator. What he misses in skills and management knowledge he makes up for in character.
However, this failed to maintain the president’s favour with the general. Relations between Zelensky and Zaluzhny had been strained for months over the failure of the 2023 counter-offensive. It was launched in the summer, and according to some in the Pentagon and elsewhere, it should have begun in the spring.
Some US and Western advisers recommended larger and more targeted attacks on specific positions that would have pitted the Ukrainian masses against weak sections of well-fortified sections of the front.
Once the fighting began, fresh Ukrainian units, trained by the Western military but lacking combat experience, struggled to cope with the brutal attacks, running into strong Russian defences. After months of fighting, Ukraine managed to retake only a few kilometres of territory, at the cost of huge losses in manpower and equipment. This put Zaluzhny at risk. The Ukrainian officer said:
This was not the way to do it. It was impossible, but the position of the commander in chief was a bit arrogant: “Let’s start a brawl, and then we’ll see”
Disagreements also emerged between Zaluzhny and the United States over the counter-offensive. The Pentagon insisted that the Ukrainian military undertake a major offensive, concentrated in one area where planners believed a breakthrough was possible. However, Kyiv opted for multiple offensives along the entire front, believing that the Russian army would not be able to reinforce multiple points at the same time.
After weeks of disagreements, “it became pretty clear over the course of the offensive that Ukrainians just weren’t interested in US advice, and they generally concluded that we have nothing to offer them advice-wise,” said one person who has advised the White House on military matters.
According to the adviser, the main argument was that the United States had no experience of waging a war like the one the Ukrainians were waging, and while US advice was welcome, it was not binding, POLITICO reports.
While blame for those disagreements fell squarely on Zaluzhny’s shoulders, he was also “hamstrung by Zelensky,” who had the final say on military matters, “and so the US kept yelling at the wrong person,” the adviser said.
In the coming months, as Ukraine is now forced on the defence, the current “war of attrition is a very, very bad choice for Ukraine,” the Ukrainian officer said.
The officer said Ukraine should take an “asymmetric” approach, targeting defence and industrial facilities inside Russia “to break them instead of this meat grinder” – which in the long run benefits Russia with its large stockpiles of equipment and weapons, according to POLITICO.
In November, Zaluzhny told the Economist magazine that the war had reached a stalemate, prompting sharp criticism from Zelensky and his advisers. Zaluzhny’s unexpected essay forced Zelensky to urgently convince his partners that the war was not a stalemate.
The fact that “Zaluzhny’s entourage is openly and publicly discussing Zaluzhny’s presidential prospects” also caused irritation, said Volodymyr Fesenko, chief analyst at the Penta Centre for Political Research in Kyiv. He noted:
This is not a power struggle. But if he does not fire Zaluzhny, after a certain time a dual power will begin to emerge. And this is already unacceptable and will be a challenge for Zelensky. There are challenges for him, political risks, but given the stakes, the two cannot coexist.
Just days after it was reported that the general had been summoned to Zelensky’s office to say he was being relieved of his duties, Zaluzhny published an opinion in CNN in which he said his troops must receive new forms of training and new weapons to fully take advantage of their slight lead in fielding new, lethal drone capabilities.
The political infighting in Kyiv is not helping to break the political deadlock in the United States, where Republicans in Congress have opposed a financial package with another aid package for Ukraine as its troops face an ammunition shortage, according to POLITICO.
This event was marked in Moscow as well. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said reports of Zaluzhny’s dismissal showed that “things are not going well” in Kyiv.
Mykola Bielieskov, a senior military analyst at the “Come Back Alive” charitable foundation, which helps the Ukrainian army with supplies, said that “no matter how events develop in connection with the leadership reshuffle, the key task for Ukraine remains unchanged – it is to develop and implement a high-quality military strategy in 2024.”
Given Russia’s current advantage in manpower and materiel, as well as the lack of US support, the US advisor said that this year there is a strong likelihood that Russia will continue its relentless offensive, wearing down Ukrainian forces until Kyiv “is forced to negotiate from an increasingly disadvantageous position.”
