Day 707
Day 707
[Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces Valeriy] Zaluzhny rarely gets out of his office, let alone Kyiv, because of his alcohol problem. This is a common affliction among our generals, by the way. Moreover, the general is blackmailing [the president] that in case of resignation, he will not remain in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but will resign because the president disbanded ... Military Medical Commissions. This is a typical trick. We do not have healthy people, but under-examined people. And our generals, according to my modest personal observations, have used this excuse many times…
…Without commenting on rumors, let me say that the sooner [Zaluzhny is sacked], the better our chances are to escape the superficial hell of people dying not only at the hands of Russians, but by our own crooked post-Soviet army. This is a chance for change, a chance for Plan 2024. — MP Mariana Bezuhla, Servant of People Party, Deputy Chair of Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee.
For years, Bezuhla has attacked and obliterated anything like integrity among her Servant of the People cohorts, a process that regularly features members of the monomajority faction squeezing their political souls from their bodies. (Bezuhla’s handling of parliament’s investigation into a “special intelligence event” involving former members of the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) lured to Minsk in July 2020 is just one example)1.
In theory, Ukraine experts think deeply about country’s precarious security situation. In reality, most of them seem to care only about whatever bizarre excuse Z decides to blurt out at any given moment, and that excuse lately is the need to reboot Ukraine’s entire system of national security and defense.
Without Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s most trusted public servant2.
Comically devoted courtiers of an increasingly emotionally unstable president are in ascendancy. Unfortunately, Z doesn’t understand for himself that he will never be president again, that this is only one term that he has now. He has to make decisions not that will give him the opportunity to be re-elected in the next election or that will support his ratings, but those that will allow him to save his country.
Some of his less noticed enablers are those who remain quiet in the face of ad hominem attacks on others. When challenged, they speak up only long enough to engage in obfuscation over issues that they must certainly know are not remotely complicated, such as whether removing the commander-in-chief during the middle of a war makes any sense.
It obviously does not.
Ukraine's Plan "Г.” Not to be confused with Operation "Ы" (September 11, 2021)
Trust in Military Commanders and Attitude to Possible Resignation of Zaluzhny (December 2003. Kyiv International Institute of Sociology)