Zelensky announces the replacement of the army chief after months of friction

Valeri Zaluzhni will cease to be the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This was decided by the general and the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a meeting they held this Thursday. Both have released separate statements in which they agree that the new phase of the war, with a boost from the Russian initiative and with Ukraine inferior in all military aspects, requires new leadership. Zelensky and Zaluzhni have wanted to underline the unity of political and military power, despite the fact that the relationship between the two became entrenched until it became a public confrontation. The president announced shortly after that the head of the Army, Oleksandr Sirski, will be Zaluzhni's successor as commander in chief of the Armed Forces.

“I thanked General Valeri Zaluzhni for the two years [de invasión] defending Ukraine. We have debated the renewal that the Armed Forces require. We have also discussed who could be part of the renewed leadership in the Armed Forces. The time for this renewal is now,” the president wrote on his social networks. Zelensky added that he had proposed that Zaluzhni continue in the military leadership. The general issued, for his part, a statement in which he called for unity: “In the first and most difficult days of the war, we faced a vile and powerful enemy. We resist together. The challenges of 2022 are different from those of 2024. That is why we must all change and adapt to the new reality. To win together.”

The last two weeks of messages from the Ukrainian presidency about the possible change in the leadership of the army caused a political storm and unrest in society. Zaluzhni is considered a hero, the only personality who rivals Zelensky in popularity. The president was facing a fracture in the country at the worst moment, when Russia has once again taken the initiative on the war front, and when the arms supply of its Western allies is declining.

Zelensky and Zaluzhni have maintained important differences since the very beginning of the Russian invasion, in February 2022. The president relativized the threat of war until the last moment and demanded that Zaluzhni not take forceful measures to stop the imminent Russian offensive. Since then, both have clashed on military decisions, from Zelensky's unilateral decision-making without consulting his top general, to Zaluzhni's increasingly harsh messages about the impossibility of recovering lost territory without greater Western weapons support and without a new phase of massive recruitment.

Zelensky publicly discredited Zaluzhni last November, demanding that it was necessary to provide optimism and denying that the front was stagnant, something that the commander in chief had warned for months, and that has proven to be true. Not only that, senior presidential officials publicly accused Zaluzhni of issuing messages that favored the enemy and demoralized the population.

The meeting they held this Thursday tried above all to avoid a breakup. “The conversation has been important and serious. The decision has been made to change the approach and strategy. I am grateful to all the people close to me. To the General Staff team, to the Ministry of Defense, to the president of Ukraine,” Zaluzhni wrote.

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