Ukraine’s government has informed the White House that President Volodymyr Zelensky decided to fire its top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny. White House officials neither supported nor objected to the planned removal, the Washington Post reported.
Zelensky has yet to issue a formal decree to remove Zaluzhny, and it is unclear when that will happen. Washington’s advance notice reflects the United States’ influential role as Ukraine’s most powerful military and political supporter, which gave the White House the opportunity to urge Zelensky to reconsider a key decision.
The departure of the top general, one of the most popular figures in Ukrainian society, could not only have an extremely negative impact on troop morale, but also shake the confidence of Western donors as the Ukrainian military tries to confront advancing Russian forces.
The main reason for this dispute is that Zaluzhny and Zelensky have clashed over divergent strategies for dealing with failures on the battlefield as the war enters its third year, as well as the general’s request to mobilise some 500,000 new soldiers. Mistrust between Zelensky and Zaluzhny grew over the years, in part because the president suspected Zaluzhny of having political ambitions.
“The perception of division at the top in Kyiv is not helpful for Ukraine, but the U.S. government should not get entangled in it,” said Steven Pifer, an Eastern Europe expert at Stanford University and a former US ambassador to Ukraine.
During a tense meeting on Monday, Zaluzhny argued that recruits are needed to make gains on the battlefield in the face of Russia’s superior firepower and troop numbers. Additionally, Zaluzhny warned that Ukraine also needs to prepare for personnel losses, which are expected to be comparable to last year’s.
We must acknowledge the significant advantage enjoyed by the enemy in mobilising human resources and how that compares with the inability of state institutions in Ukraine to improve the manpower levels of our armed forces without the use of unpopular measures, he said in his column on CNN.
Zelensky, on the other hand, rejected such a development for several reasons, firstly, because of the lack of funds to properly provide recruits; secondly, such an aggressive draft would be politically unpopular.
“The president does not believe that this mass mobilisation of men between the ages of 18 to 27 is desirable or warranted at this point,” said a person close to Zelensky.
During the meeting, Zelensky told Zaluzhny that he was fired, but Zelensky’s spokesman Sergei Nikiforov denied Zaluzhny’s dismissal on Monday.
The first potential candidate is the head of Ukraine’s defence intelligence service, Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov. The 38-year-old general has experience in special forces, but not as an army commander. Another option is Oleksandr Syrskyi, the current commander of the ground forces. The 58-year-old commander is credited with leading the defence of Kyiv in the first month of the war and then organising a successful counter-offensive in the north-east of Kharkiv region in the autumn of 2022. But Syrskyi is particularly disliked among ordinary soldiers, particularly because of the situation with the defence of Bakhmut.
Whoever replaces Zaluzhny may not end the public controversy between the general and the president, but someone will have to take over.
