Kyiv, Ukraine – Rumours and allegations have swirled in latest weeks over the dismissal of Valerii Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s military chief.
Final week, a number of lawmakers and insiders claimed the taciturn and immensely fashionable 50-year-old four-star normal was dismissed and set to steer Ukraine’s Nationwide Safety and Defence Council.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy determined to fireplace him in early December after Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv, the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper reported, citing an unnamed supply.
However on Monday, Defence Minister Rustem Umerov stated: “This isn’t true.”
Though the ministry doesn’t maintain sway over Zaluzhny, within the case of a possible firing, it must submit a “suggestion” for his dismissal to Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s nominal commander-in-chief.
“There’s nothing to speak about. There was no dismissal. I’ve nothing so as to add,” Zelenskyy’s spokesperson Serhiy Nikiforov stated in televised remarks on Monday.
However a number of observers have doubts.
“There was an try to persuade Zaluzhny to change to a different job voluntarily, on his personal. The try wasn’t very profitable, so the matter has been postponed,” Kyiv-based analyst Volodymyr Fesenko informed Al Jazeera.
However the dismissal “is a matter of time and circumstances”, he stated.
There’s “psychological rigidity” between Zaluzhny and the president, who stays dissatisfied with the failures of final yr’s counterattack, Fesenko stated.
Common regardless of counteroffensive failures
A number of counterstrikes in late 2022 liberated nearly half of Russia-occupied areas and guaranteed the Ukrainian public that the 2023 summer season marketing campaign within the east and south would succeed. However Russia used a lull in hostilities to construct multilayer defence installations alongside the 1,000km-long (621-mile) entrance line and deployed lots of of 1000’s of newly mobilised servicemen to man them.
Zaluzhny’s months-long counterattack morphed right into a World Struggle I-like trench warfare as his forces gained, misplaced and regained tiny patches of land amid harrowing losses of troopers and Western-supplied weaponry.
Even the failed mutiny and disbandment of the Wagner mercenary group, which spearheaded Russia’s advance, didn’t assist the Ukrainian counterattacks.
The failure was variously blamed on Zaluzhny’s tactical errors and delays within the provide of Western weaponry resembling fighter jets and missiles.
As Zaluzhny has not provide you with a brand new motion plan for 2024, Zelenskyy has sometimes bypassed him in managing the armed forces, Fesenko stated.
However Zaluzhny’s authority among the many high brass and servicemen stays sky excessive.
In early 2022, as Ukrainian politicians had been adamant that Russian President Vladimir Putin was bluffing and wouldn’t dare invade, Zaluzhny, who has headed the armed forces since July 2021, labored exhausting to organize.
“Within the political sphere, there have been totally different views, however the army with him on the helm tried exhausting to prepare, and he demonstrated success,” Lieutenant Common Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of Ukraine’s Common Employees, informed Al Jazeera.
As soon as a little-known determine, Zaluzhny not often speaks to the press and shuns publicity. He’s by far essentially the most trusted individual in wartime Ukraine.
He’s extra fashionable than Zelenskyy – an astronomical 88 p.c of Ukrainians belief him, a latest ballot discovered, whereas 62 p.c belief the president.
Seventy-two p.c stated they’re in opposition to his dismissal whereas 2 p.c would help it, based on the survey by the Kyiv Worldwide Sociology Institute carried out in early December.
However recognition gained’t essentially translate into political success.
Ukraine’s elites and public don’t usually view the army and legislation enforcement businesses as a supply of political and presidential materials.
Ukraine’s second president, Leonid Kuchma, appointed former intelligence chief Evhen Marchuk as prime minister in 1995 however quickly fired him for “attempting to type his personal political picture”.
One other wannabe president, former Inside Minister Yuri Kravchenko, died in 2005 of two gunshots to the top that had been formally deemed suicide.
Former intelligence chief Ihor Smeshko and ex-Defence Minister Anatoly Hritsenko fashioned their very own political events however gained minimal help of their makes an attempt to run for president.
In Ukraine, the military is “not a political establishment with a particular imaginative and prescient of improvement like in Latin America”, Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kuschch informed Al Jazeera.
So ought to Zaluzhny select to depart the army for politics, he can be a “good sparring associate” for Zelenskyy however wouldn’t be elected president, stated Igar Tyshkevich of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, a suppose tank in Kyiv.
“However it’s nearly assured that he would head one of many largest fractions within the Verkhovna Rada,” Ukraine’s decrease home of parliament, Tyshkevich informed Al Jazeera.
He dismissed considerations that protests may erupt if Zaluzhny is fired.
Media leaks have named two generals who might substitute Zaluzhny.
One is Kyrylo Budanov, a 38-year-old who led small intelligence teams that landed in annexed Crimea earlier than the warfare and now heads the Most important Directorate of Intelligence within the Ministry of Defence.
His company despatched helicopters to assist Ukrainian servicemen combating within the besieged Azovstal plant in Mariupol in 2022.
It has carried out drone assaults on bombers, warships, air defence techniques and army bases deep inside Russia and annexed Crimea.
Budanov’s males have assassinated pro-Russian strongmen and disloyal Ukrainian politicians in separatist-held and Russia-occupied areas.
One other potential alternative for Zaluzhny is Oleksandr Syrsky, a seasoned army veteran who defended Kyiv in early 2022 and kicked Russian forces out of the jap area of Kharkiv later that yr.
If both fills Zaluzhny’s sneakers, there’s certain to be bitter public emotions in direction of Zelenskyy, but when an upcoming counteroffensive is profitable, they might “dissolve inside months”, Tyshkevich stated.
