31 January 2024

WHOA! JUST SAY NO: Reckoning in Zelenskyy's Ukraine

Tension between the president and General Zaluzhnyi has grown

Ousting the general would go down badly with Ukrainian troops

Politics

Z

Zelenskiy Asked Ukraine’s Top General to Quit and He Refused

___________________________________________________________________________________

Euromaidan Press

Does Zelenskyy want to fire top general Zaluzhnyi? Everything we know - Euromaidan Press

Koha Ditore

15 hours ago

Top Ukrainian commander ignores Zelensky's request to resign - KOHA.net

Bloomberg.com

1 hour ago

Ukraine Top General Refuses Zelenskiy Request to Quit - Bloomberg

By Daryna Krasnolutska

January 31, 2024 at 12:22 AM PST

Updated on

January 31, 2024 at 1:55 AM PST

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Ukrainian general is the most popular figure in the country other than the president and his high standing has irritated Zelenskiy’s office, particularly as the politician has been considering whether to hold fresh elections, currently suspended under martial law.

Orysia Lutsevych, a Ukraine expert with the Chatham House thinktank, said she believed the leaks about Zaluzhnyi’s dismissal were designed to test public opinion.

“In view of Russia’s own attempts to destabilise Ukrainian unity from inside, this kind of attack on Zaluzhnyi plays into the enemy’s hands.”

In November, Zelenskiy warned generals against entering politics in an interview with the Sun.

He said it would be a “huge mistake” if commanders “manage war keeping in mind that tomorrow you will do politics or elections”.

Ukraine’s top general refuses request from Zelenskiy to step down

Personality clashes blamed for conflict between president and popular commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi

". . .Oleksii Goncharenko, a Ukrainian opposition MP and ally of the general, told the Guardian that he understood that “yesterday the president asked Zaluzhnyi to resign but he declined to do so”.

He blamed personality clashes for the conflict. “Personally I think this is a bad idea. There are not fundamental issues between them but Zelenskiy’s office has been concerned that Zaluzhnyi has been making political not military statements,” Goncharenko said.

Expectations that Zaluzhnyi could be forced out imminently surfaced on social media on Monday afternoon.

A couple of hours later, the defence ministry responded curtly: “Dear journalists, we immediately answer everyone: No, this is not true,” assuming that everybody reading understood what was being referred to.

It is not clear that the matter will end there.

Goncharenko said Zelenskiy could dismiss Zaluzhnyi and replace him – a process that requires the support of the defence minister – after assessing the public and international reaction.

The most likely replacement would be Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, responsible for covert operations against Moscow. Budanov was touted earlier this year as a replacement for Oleksii Reznikov as defence minister, in another protracted dismissal saga that began with similar bouts of speculation.

It is not clear what an alternative military strategy would look like given Russia’s entrenched frontline positions, while Ukraine’s most urgent crisis is not the battlefield but persuading Congress to approve a $61bn military aid package that would secure a year or more’s weapons supply from the US.

Democrats on Tuesday accused Republicans of being on the brink of deliberately collapsing a deal linking aid to Ukraine to a tightening of immigration policy at the US’s southern border in order to help Donald Trump’s election campaign.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, urged European leaders to accelerate aid to Ukraine in a speech to Swedish military academy, saying the “costs … of a Russian victory are too high for all of us”.
He warned: “There is no more security framework and architecture on our continent if there is a Russian victory.”

Reuters

Zelenskiy calls for Ukrainian unity after rift with top general | Reuters

The Telegraph

16 hours ago

Volodymyr Zelensky seeks to remove Ukraine's top general

Visit

Speculation has also swirled in Ukrainian media for months that Zaluzhnyi would be the only viable challenger to Zelenskiy for the presidency if fresh elections were to be called while the war continues and the general were to run.

Although Zaluzhnyi has never publicly said he would enter politics, informal Facebook posts showing photos of him with his wife were interpreted in Bankova – Ukraine’s equivalent of Downing Street – as a signal of intent.

In December, leaked polling seen by the Kyiv Independent suggested that Zaluzhnyi was Zelenskiy’s leading challenger and that the incumbent would only narrowly beat him, by two points in a runoff. At the time, the president’s office denied it had heard of the poll, although there were rumours it had been commissioned by them.

_________________________________________________________________________________

President Zelensky told the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces he was dismissing him but was forced to reverse his decision after pressure from senior military commanders and international partners.