Kyiv, Ukraine
Reuters
For Ukrainian armed forces commander General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, even his status as national hero for leading the war effort against Moscow’s invading forces is not enough to quash questions over whether he will keep his job.
A series of Western and Ukrainian media reports this week said that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had asked Zaluzhnyi to step aside this week, a request he declined.
Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi holds a press conference, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 26th December, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Valentyn Ogirenko/File photo
A source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday that ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi had been offered Zaluzhnyi’s job but turned it down.
The Ukrainian General Staff and president’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the approach to Syrskyi.
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RUSSIA AND UKRAINE EXCHANGE PRISONERS DESPITE PLANE CRASH LAST WEEK
Russia and Ukraine said on Wednesday they had completed another large prisoner exchange despite the crash last week of a Russian military transport plane that Moscow says was shot down by Ukraine carrying Ukrainian PoWs en route to a similar swap.
The two countries have carried out periodic prisoner swaps via intermediaries since the war began nearly two years ago, despite the absence of peace talks since the early months.
A still image from video, released by the Russian Defence Ministry, shows what it said to be captured Russian service personnel in a bus following the latest exchange of prisoners of war at an unknown location in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict, in this image taken from handout footage released on 31st January, 2024. PICTURE: Russian Defence Ministry/Handout via Reuters
The Russian Defence Ministry said each side had received 195 soldiers, while Ukraine said it had got 207 people back.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry thanked the United Arab Emirates for helping broker the deal, adding in a statement that Russian soldiers would be flown to Moscow for medical and psychological treatment.
The ministry said Wednesday’s swap was originally intended to take place on 24th January, but was disrupted by Ukraine shooting down a Russian plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners to the exchange point with a ground-to-air missile killing all 74 people on board.
The Il-76 transport plane was downed inside Russia’s Belgorod region. President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Kyiv had used a US Patriot missile system to bring it down.
Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied that it downed the plane, and has demanded proof of who was on board.
Putin said Moscow would continue such exchanges and that Kyiv had indicated it was open to more.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed the exchange on X: “Our people are back. 207 of them. We return them home no matter what.”
Ukraine’s state body in charge of PoWs said the 50th such exchange had brought home soldiers involved in defending the cities of Mariupol and Kherson as well as some captured by Russia on Snake Island in the Black Sea.
It said marines and combat medics were among the Ukrainians returned, with 36 injured or seriously ill.
The latest and biggest exchange was on 3rd January, when 478 captives were traded, also with UAE mediation.
– CORRESPONDENTS with reporting by YULIIA DYSA in Gdansk, Poland/Reuters
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Ukrainian forces are currently struggling in the battlefield.
A much-anticipated summer counteroffensive made little headway in the south and east, and Russian forces are inflicting small but costly defeats along the 1,000-kilometre front.
Western military and financial support is increasingly hard to come by, leaving Kyiv more exposed to regular attacks by Russian drones and missiles that are sapping its energy.
The state of the war is not down to Zaluzhnyi alone, but given his popularity and proven ability as an inspiring commander, the fact that Kyiv may be seeking to replace him may reflect the desire for a fresh approach to the war.
A hero to many
Defying overwhelming odds, Ukraine’s soldiers used stealth and speed to thwart Russia’s advance on Kyiv, helping to ensure that, even now, Russian President Vladimir Putin remains a long way from conquering Ukraine.
As the war progressed, Zaluzhnyi’s stock only rose, and he won praise at home and abroad when his forces launched major counter-offensives in the north-east and south that recaptured huge swathes of land and raised hopes of an unlikely victory.
A portrait of him smiling and flashing the peace sign was spray-painted on walls after the liberation of the southern city of Kherson, under the slogan “God and Zaluzhnyi are with us”.
Since then, Ukraine’s battlefield momentum has stalled, yet polling indicated that Zaluzhnyi was still trusted by 92 per cent of Ukrainians late last year, significantly above Zelenskiy’s 77 per cent.
Reported frictions burst into the open in November after Zaluzhnyi was quoted by the Economist as saying the war as at a “stalemate”, in a gloomy assessment that jarred with Zelenskiy’s more optimistic vision.
The 50-year-old four-star general, who rarely speaks in public but is occasionally shown on news bulletins poring over maps and addressing commanders in fatigues, argued that better technology is the key to breaking the impasse.
The president’s office rebuked him, and one of Zaluzhnyi’s senior officers said he had been sacked by Zelenskiy over the general’s head.
Were he to be removed and go into politics – though he has never voiced political ambitions – the “Iron General” could prove a formidable rival to anyone.
The burly “volunteer”
Zaluzhnyi began his military training in the 1990s, after Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union, graduating with honours and rising up the ranks.
He got a taste of real conflict in 2014 when he served in an area of eastern Ukraine where Russian-backed militants had seized territory.
Tall and burly with cropped hair, Zaluzhnyi, whose military call sign is “Volunteer”, has a reputation for having a good rapport with his subordinates and allowing local commanders to make their own decisions on the battlefield.
To many, he felt like a breath of fresh air among Ukraine’s older Soviet-style generals, and embodied Kyiv’s desire to break with the Soviet military practices it had inherited.
His warning in November that the war was sliding into an attritional phase that suited Russia was out of kilter with Kyiv’s official rhetoric, but for many of his soldiers it was recognition of the painful reality on the battlefield.
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Russia had been building up fortifications since late 2022 after suffering humiliating defeats in Kharkiv and Kherson regions, with more recent Ukrainian advances thwarted.
Tens of thousands of soldiers have been killed and wounded on both sides, although there are no reliable official figures.
Ukraine desperately needs to replenish its overstretched and exhausted ranks, but the government has been unable to amend call-up laws to help recruit up to half a million more soldiers.
Kyiv is also struggling to maintain Western support that has been vital to its war effort. Both the United States and the European Union have in the last two months failed to deliver hefty aid packages that they had promised.
It all means that, as deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two enters its third year, Zaluzhnyi’s boots would be very hard to fill.
