How long can Ukraine be torn between President and General until it breaks?
One day after bugs were found in an office that he planned to use, with the Ukrainian domestic security service (SBU) launching an investigation, Commander in Chief Valery Zaluzhny has publicly and strongly criticized a presidential decision to fire and replace regional military draft office chiefs.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired all of Ukraine’s regional military recruitment heads in August, in what he termed a corruption crackdown.
The rift between the General and the President have escalated to the point where Zaluzhny was criticized by Zelensky for his article in Newsweek, had top aides fired, and his top deputy was killed in a ‘gift bomb’ terrorist attack, and information shows that the Presidential Office is passing orders directly to frontline troops, bypassing the supposedly Commander in Chief.
So the recent spying in his offices may have been the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, leading Zaluzhny to an unprecedented public criticism of Zelensky.
A house divided cannot stand.
Zelensky said, at the of the firing of the conscription heads, that a state investigation into centers across Ukraine exposed abuses by officials ‘ranging from illegal enrichment to transporting draft-eligible men across the border despite a wartime ban on them leaving the country’.
Reuters reported:
“Asked by reporters on the sidelines of an event on Monday about whether the decision affected mobilization levels, Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny bemoaned the recruitment chiefs’ sacking.
‘These were professionals, they knew how to do this, and they are gone’, Interfax Ukraine cited him as saying.
Zaluzhny’s frank assessment of battlefield realities in a November essay published in The Economist are in stark contrast to the unwavering optimism of Zelensky’s public speeches.”
Even the Ukrainska Pravda, a major Ukrainian media outlet, has had to report on the ‘long history of growing tensions between the two men’, citing several anonymous officials.
Asked by reporters to comment on the Defense Ministry’s plan to boost military recruitment, Zaluzhny was clear that the old system should be brought back – which is quite a departure from his usual publicly silent objections.
“‘It is still a little early to evaluate recruiting. As for mobilization issues, it is not necessary to strengthen it, but to return it to those boundaries (and) to those frameworks that worked before’, Interfax Ukraine quoted him as saying.”
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