Zelensky Barrels Into Showdown With Star General Amid Ukraine Tensions

A long-running spat between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the country’s top commander is breaking into public view as Kyiv seeks to shore up its battlefield and diplomatic positions under a cloud of unmet expectations.

With freezing temperatures settling over 600 miles of churned battlefields, Ukraine is facing another difficult winter of Russian bombardment. Ukrainian officials will spend the coming months trying to shore up waning Western financial and military support, while batting away demands for renewed peace talks with Moscow.

And now, the president’s office is at odds with General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces who has become a well-known and highly respected figure in Western military and diplomatic circles. More importantly, the “iron general” has become an icon among Ukrainians.

One source with knowledge of the situation—who spoke with Newsweek on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly—said the president’s office sees signs of Zaluzhnyi transitioning into a political actor, a role they consider inappropriate in the midst of an existential war.

An imminent dismissal of the commander-in-chief, the source said, is unlikely, but they acknowledged that the situation is fluid. The current head-to-head is unlikely to erode Western support for Kyiv, they suggested, if it remains relatively contained and does not impact on Ukraine’s operational capabilities.

Some in Ukraine see the falling out as a reflection of the political ambitions of Zelensky and Andriy Yermak; his right-hand man and head of the presidential office. With uncertainty around the postponed 2024 presidential election, Zelensky’s team are wary of any potential challengers. Zaluzhnyi is one of the few figures as well regarded in Ukraine as the wartime president.

Ukraine’s defense minister has already dismissed any report of tensions.

“There is no conflict. This is a fictional construct,” Rustem Umerov told The Kyiv Post this week.

Newsweek has contacted the president’s office by email to request comment.

‘Top Soldier’

The general’s public profile has exploded since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Appointed to the role in summer 2021, Zaluzhnyi spent several years in command roles in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region where Kyiv had been at war with Moscow and its local separatist puppets since 2014.

The country’s “top soldier” has cultivated a reputation as a stoic yet personable commander, committed to full territorial liberation of Ukraine and highly protective of the country’s operational independence.

“He is a very empathetic person,” Liudmyla Dolhonovska, who served as Zaluzhnyi’s strategic communications adviser until March 2023, told Newsweek. “His main approach is to be the human being first.”

This “human-first” approach, Dolhonovska—who now serves as the chief of staff at the American University Kyiv—said, was “at the heart of changing the culture inside the armed forces, to shift it from Soviet-style to Western-style.”

“He’s not soft,” Dolhonovska added. “He’s very strict. He has his principles and follows them. He’s really very demanding, first to himself, secondly to his subordinates, and he’s super-professional.”

Though the demands and intensity of the role multiplied exponentially after February 2022, Dolhonovska said the commander-in-chief remained in control.

“He was calm, he was super-concentrated, he knew what he was doing,” she said.

Dolhonovska said the general was “never interested in any media monitoring” nor concerned about future political ambitions. “He always repeated the same phrase: ‘I’m just doing my job’,” she said.

Glowing profiles of Zaluzhnyi proliferated through late 2022 and early 2023, when Ukrainian forces appeared to be turning the tide against Moscow, liberating much of Kharkiv Oblast and reaching the occupied city of Kherson. But the slaughter around Bakhmut, disappointing southern counteroffensive, and deteriorating situation in Avdiivka have somewhat dimmed the general’s rising star.

Zaluzhnyi has cultivated a reputation as a commander staunchly against any hint of concessions to the Russian invaders, an outlook he retains despite the difficult outlook for Kyiv’s mauled forces.

“He doesn’t determine the political goals, he is doing what the military has to do to gain the advantage,” Dolhonovska said, adding that the weight of Ukraine’s many casualties weighs heavily on Zaluzhnyi.

“He is not the guy who is ready for some political negotiation or Minsk agreements,” she added, referring to the failed 2014-2015 accords that paused the Donbas conflict but failed to prevent the current war.

Friendly Fire

Zaluzhnyi’s rising profile and popularity—a February poll put the commander-in-chief level with Zelensky among Ukrainians—may be deemed a threat to the president’s office, particularly as Ukraine descends into a blame game over its underwhelming 2023 summer counteroffensive operation.

In November, Zaluzhnyi made global headlines when he characterized the front-line situation as a “stalemate,” an assertion later disputed by the president.

Zelensky is now “two steps away from dismissing Zaluzhnyi,” Ivan Stupak—a former officer in the Security Service of Ukraine and now an adviser to the Ukrainian parliament’s national security, defense and intelligence committee—told Newsweek.

“The president tries not to talk with Zaluzhnyi at all anymore,” he said. “Zelensky is conducting some very brief meetings with highly ranked military officials, but without the presence of Zaluzhnyi. It’s not a good situation.”

“That’s because of jealousy,” Stupak added. “In the previous period when Ukraine gained some success on the battlefield, this tension was not on the surface. It was deep inside. But now in December when everything is going wrong—about Western support, about the counteroffensive, it’s not going as planned. So, tensions have risen to the surface.”

A source with knowledge of discussions in the president’s office—who requested anonymity to speak candidly—told Newsweek Zelensky’s team is the source of the unfolding drama.

“Probably Zaluzhnyi was not happy with the huge intrusion of Zelensky and the attempts of the office of the president to turn this war into politics,” the source said.

“Zelensky has been fighting literally every possible future competitor in the elections that will happen, sooner or later,” the source added. “This is something that is going to drag our country down… The office will say that it’s Zaluzhnyi who is guilty for the fact that we have not returned the lands, but this is just pathological populism.”

“Zaluzhnyi was the one who stood for the fight when Zelensky had doubts and was actually ready to compromise in April,” they added.

Another popular figure who has fallen foul of Zelensky’s office is Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko. “[Zaluzhnyi] told the truth,” Klitschko said this week of the general’s dour recent battlefield reports. “Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth.

“Of course, we can euphorically lie to our people and our partners. But you can’t do that forever. Some of our politicians have criticized Zaluzhnyi for the clear words—wrongly. I stand behind him.”

Sources told Newsweek that Yermak—Kyiv’s éminence grise who has amassed massive influence as Zelensky’s right-hand man—is central to the dispute with Zaluzhnyi.

“Andrey Yermak was playing a big role here,” one source with knowledge of the situation said. “Yermak obviously had intentions to change Zaluzhnyi for another more loyal person, or less popular.”

“He is the man who is trying to rule everything, but using the hands of the president,” Stupak said. “He’s the first person who the president sees in the morning and the last person the president sees in the evening. They spend lots of time together, so it’s very likely that Yermak is driving some changes.”

Fresh domestic drama is an unwelcome additional challenge for Ukraine, which almost two years into the full-scale war is still hoping to liberate the 20 percent of its territory still held by Moscow. A bleak winter looms, with Western backing looking shaky and the Kremlin seemingly committed to a long and painful conflict.

“I like what Americans say in such cases: ‘United we stand, divided we fall,'” Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament representing Zelensky’s party, told Newsweek. “It should also be our motto. Especially now.”

“Russian propaganda will be using any rift in Ukraine,” added Merezhko, who also chairs the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee. “They understand that they cannot break us from the outside and will try to sow seeds of discontent and disagreements within the country.”

Asked if there were individuals looking to leverage the situation for political gain, Merezhko responded: “It’s hard to say. I hope not. At the same time, sometimes it seems to me that politics is back in Ukraine; some disagreements and even squabbles are inevitable.”

“The issue is how to decide these disagreements,” he added. “Better in [a] constructive way and without going into public.

“Before they say or do something, our politicians should think twice what consequences it will have and how it can be used by the enemy.”