The Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army, Valery Zaluzhny, appears to be coming to terms with differences with President Volodymyr Zelenskyi over the scope of mobilization to be carried out and the strategy to be adopted for 2024. Le Point, quoted by Rador, in turn raises the question of who can replace the popular Valery Zaluzhny, and the president of the Kyiv School of Economics, Tymofiy Mylovanov, analyzes the options.

After the completion of the counteroffensive launched by Volodymyr Zelensky on November 30, the future of the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny remains uncertain. Admired by the population and popular among soldiers, the organizer of the autumn offensive of 2022, which made it possible to recapture part of the Kharkiv region and liberate Kherson, seems to be on the way out.

The President and the Chief of the General Staff disagree on mobilization issues. The second wants to mobilize 500,000 people, while the first is postponing, waiting for the green light from the Ukrainian parliament.

In an interview with the Italian channel Rai on February 4, Volodymyr Zelenskyi talked about the replacement of a certain number of high-ranking state officials, both civilian and military. Will the chief of staff be on the list? In recent months, signs of tension between the two men have become more frequent. In November 2023, Zaluzhny stated in The Economist that the war had reached a “stalemate.” An analysis that was immediately refuted by the Ukrainian president.

Another point of tension is the mobilization of another 500,000 people. The Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, is currently blocking the process, the administration chief defends, but to a lesser extent the president, who said in December that he needed “more arguments to support this idea.” After the last episode on January 29, several mass media assure that the Ukrainian president asked for Zaluzhny’s resignation. Information that has since been denied.

In addition to disagreements over the strategy of waging war in the coming months, some observers suspect that Zelensky is jealous of the officer’s popularity. A survey published by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology in December showed that 88% of Ukrainians support the general. The popularity index of the Ukrainian president was only 62%. “In Ukraine, he is Saint Zaluzhnyi,” explains a French military source who returned from Kyiv.

Budanov and Sirki were once again named as potential successors to Zaluzhnyi, but one of them “did not want to work”

Two potential candidates are applying for the position of head of the Ukrainian army. 38-year-old Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov is the young head of Ukrainian military intelligence, the GRU. His mysterious look, which seems to lack emotions, is known to both Russians and Ukrainians. The one who announced the invasion of his country in February 2022 has since waged a battle consisting of attacks and operations behind enemy lines. Murders, shelling of the Kerch bridge in Crimea, battles with Wagner’s mercenaries in Sudan… One gets the impression that the GRU is everywhere and is winning victories, of course, symbolic, but victories. But, according to Tymofii Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics, Budanov “wouldn’t want this job.” In February 2023, he also applied for the position of Minister of Defense.

The second option is 58-year-old general Oleksandr Sirskyi. The commander of the army ensured the defense of Kyiv in the first days of the invasion.

Then he allegedly expressed the idea of ​​attacking Kupyansk, a key city for the Russian system in eastern Ukraine, in September 2022. The officer is also very popular among the soldiers and the population. Awaiting his possible removal, Valery Zaluzhnyi wrote a long analytical text about the situation in the American press CNN, saying that the Ukrainian army should especially develop unmanned technologies and abandon “outdated and stereotypical thinking”.

Both were also floated as possible successors by the Financial Times.

“We have to recognize the enemy’s significant advantage in mobilizing human resources and compare it with the inability of Ukrainian state institutions to increase the level of personnel of our armed forces without resorting to unpopular measures,” he adds. The text, in which everything is against Zelensky, without ever mentioning his name.

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