The political train crash that had been announced for months in Ukraine ended up taking place this Thursday. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has dismissed the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, General Valery Zalujni.
The new head of the army will be General Oleksandr Sirski, who until now was in charge of the ground forces. This was one of the two names that have been put forward by the media to replace Zalujni when the end of the spate of disagreements between the political leader and the military leader of the country was thought to be imminent.
The replacement in the military leadership has been dressed in the need to renew the strategy after almost two years defending against the troops of Russia, which its president, Vladimir Putin, sent on February 24, 2022 in the which he called a "special military operation" against the neighboring country.
After holding a meeting with the deposed general, Zelenski turned to Telegram to announce the replacement. He thanked Zalujni "for his two years of defense" and "for every victory we have achieved together".
According to Zelenski, the impeachment was reached after agreeing that it was the right thing to do. "Today we spoke frankly about the need for change in the army. Urgent changes I have proposed to General Zalujni that from now on he continues in the team (...). I will be very grateful if you accept," the Ukrainian president wrote.
Defense Minister Rustem Umérov also thanked Zalujni "for his achievements and victories" via Facebook.
The main person affected by this change also spoke. After the meeting with Zelenskiy, he said that the tasks facing Ukraine's army now are different from those of 2022. "They all have to change and adapt to new realities," Zalujni wrote. According to the general, during the conversation with Zelenski "it was decided that it is necessary to change the approaches and the strategy".
During an interview with Italian public broadcaster RAI on Sunday, Zelenski acknowledged that he was considering removing Zalujni. He argued that "a restart" was needed, with a "replacement of a series of State leaders, not only from a sector like the military".
In this way, and for the first time, the Ukrainian president acknowledged that he had on the table the idea of expelling the head of the army, with whom in the autumn he publicly disagreed on the course of the war. Among other things, Zalujni told The Economist that the fighting at the front had reached a stalemate. The president publicly disagreed with the assessment, which he indirectly described as defeatist. Then they also clashed over the possible mobilization of new soldiers. Then came rumors and news about Zalujni's departure from the military leadership. They arrived accompanied by alleged political aspirations of the military, although he had not spoken out on the matter.
Polls at the end of last year indicated that the former commander-in-chief of the armed forces was trusted by 88% of Ukrainians, significantly more than Zelenskiy, whose popularity stood at 62%. so that the military began to appear to him as a future and serious political rival. The admiration of the Ukrainians is due, among other things, to the success in defending Kyiv against the Russian advance and the recovery of large areas of territory in Kharkiv (northeast) and Kherson (south).
On Thursday, Zelenski asked his new army chief, Oleksandr Sirski, for a "realistic" battle plan against Russia for 2024 after the failure of Kyiv's counter-offensive last year.
"I expect these changes in the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the near future: a realistic and detailed action plan for 2024" that takes "into account the real situation on the battlefield, as well as future prospects," Zelensky declared in his daily video address.
