THE PRESIDENT VS. THE GENERALUkrainian General Valery Zaluzhny wants the war to end now, and President Volodymyr Zelensky may just have fired him
It’s suddenly a tabloid war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is reported to have demanded that General Valery Zaluzhny, the battle-scarred and much respected commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, resign. Zaluzhny has said nothing in public, but his spokesman has denied that his boss was fired. The ongoing drama between the pair has caused consternation for many in Washington, since Zaluzhny said last fall in an interview with the Economist that the war against Russia was in stalemate. He had not shared his dour message in advance with Zelensky, though it was known to a few in Washington. Some at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community welcomed Zaluzhny’s assessment as the beginning of an inevitable peace process. I reported in December that Zaluzhny had been in secret discussions with his Russian counterpart, General Valery Gerasimov, on the many complicated issues that needed to be resolved if the war came to an end. Gerasimov was keeping his boss in Moscow, Vladimir Putin, informed; Zaluzhny was not doing the same in Kyiv. One immediate issue was re-establishing prisoner exchanges, which had initially been implemented with the help of Turkey, on a limited basis early in the war but soon dwindled. That such exchanges had been reestablished in negotiations between the two involved armies became an issue last week when the Ukrainian military shot down a Russian military transport plane now believed to have been involved in prisoner repatriation. There is no evidence that Zelensky knew that sixty-five of his fellow Ukrainians, all captured by the Russian Army, were on board the plane, but he certainly knew, I was told by a knowledgeable American official, that the prisoner exchanges had been going on for many weeks. The incident was difficult for even the best of America’s newspapers to assess. The New York Times noted that if Ukraine “did shoot down a Russian plane with its own soldiers aboard, even unwittingly, it would be a painful setback at a difficult time for its war effort, which is severely challenged by ammunition and personnel shortage and fears that Western support is eroding.” Zelensky’s desire to fire his commanding general is the result, some Americans believe, of his knowledge that Zaluzhny had continued to participate—whether directly or through aides is not known—in secret talks since last fall with American and other Western officials on how best to achieve a ceasefire and negotiate an end to the war with Russia. It was those talks that led Zaluzhny to declare to the Economist that the war was stalemated. Zelensky has talked of mobilizing 500,000 more soldiers, via another draft, and to try again this spring to launch another counteroffensive against the Russians. Ukraine, of course, would need renewed funding from the Biden administration to do so. It is not clear that Republicans in Congress are prepared to finance another counteroffensive, but there is little doubt that the Biden administration would lobby hard for the funds. (On Thursday, the EU approved funding for Ukraine in excess of 50 billion euros.) All of this comes at a time when there has been renewed interest among some in the American military and intelligence community in finding a way to both support significant reform in the Ukrainian government and support Zaluzhny’s efforts for far-reaching talks with Russia about a settlement in the war. A few hints of the details were provided last week to the Washington Post in a story headlined “In Ukraine, U.S. dials back plans to take turf.” The article left open the possibility of Ukraine undertaking future military action against Russia. The Post reported that the key elements are support for Ukraine’s battered industrial and export base and funding for the political reforms required for full integration into Western Europe. According to the knowledgeable American official, the first step of the new concept is a long-standing issue: financial reform. Zelensky must be told: “You’ve got to get rid of corruption before we do anything more.” The second step is something that does not exist today in Ukraine: a serious audit of all government funding. The official said Zelensky should consider the billions he needs “as our money, as an investment with all of the rules” for its disbursement “to be laid out. and followed.” Last year CIA Director William Burns secretly flew to Kyiv to warn Zelensky face-to-face that Washington was aware of his personal corruption and his unwillingness to dismiss any of the dozens of officials—who were named by Burns—known to be deeply involved in diverting defense funds to personal accounts. Burns also told the president, as I reported, that there was anger among some of his subordinates because he was taking too large a cut of the spoils. “The third step,” the official said, is for Zelensky to use the funds “to build infrastructure and the economy. The fourth and final step is to defend your country.” The official said that the plan is the new American message for Zelensky. “There is no mention in our plan about a ceasefire. We kept the word fighting in there. Let’s keep the Russians spending as they have in the war.” He said there was nothing in the new message that would prevent Ukraine and Russia from accepting “the essential territorial divisions that now exist” in the ongoing secret talks between representatives of Gerasimov and Zaluzhny. The actual concept is far more complicated and far more ambitious, I was told by the official, and envisions sustained support for Zaluzhny and reforms that would lead to the end of the Zelensky regime. The talk this week of firing Zaluzhny left some of the planners dismayed. The official told me that forging a new strategy requires “consultation and education of key patriotic and realistic Ukrainians.” The danger with such reform is that there will be leaks to the press and “an effort by the entrenched corrupt beneficiaries of the US ‘free lunch’ policy to derail the process.” Referring to tensions between Zelensky and Zaluzhny, he said: “This is an old-fashioned power struggle. We all know that stopping this madness won’t be easy and may fail, but lots of lives are at stake and integrity demands given the best efforts. We couldn’t have gotten airborne without a willing and courageous pilot,” referring to General Zaluzhny. “Of course, Zelensky knew that Zaluzny was dealing with the West,” the official said. “But Zelensky will be a dead man walking with the army, which is in favor of the general. He’s going to have a mutiny on his hands." The current plan evolved among experts in the intelligence and military bureaucracy without input from the White House, the State Department, or the National Security Council. “It stems from the American and Ukraine general staffs and it is putting investments” from private industry, the official said, “and not solely government funding and grants as the ticket out. “Putin, too,” the official said, “is looking for a way out. And he’s got the message.” The Russian leader has won the four oblasts that formed the core of his battle plan, after earlier losses in the war, and his control of Crimea is no longer an open question. “The strategy now being proposed,” the official suggested, in talks a few blocks from the White House but light-years away in attitude, “is to settle the war and settle the financial plan for Ukraine.” |