Mayor of Kiev Vitali Klitschko, in an interview Dec. 2 with Switzerland’s media channel “20 Minuten,” stated that Ukraine’s UAF Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny had told the truth about the futility of the war, and that the lying had to stop. Regarding Zaluzhny’s evaluation that Ukraine could not win a military victory, Klitschko told “20 Minuten,” “He told the truth. Some may not want to hear the truth, [but] we can’t lie to our people and partners indefinitely.“‘
While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has faced criticism from military circles, Klitschko’s comments were rather novel, coming from an elected official in Ukraine. He went further, when the decline in Zelenskyy’s popularity was raised: “People see who is effective and who is not. People are wondering why we weren’t better prepared for this war, why Zelenskyy denied until the last moment that it would come … or [how] the Russians could get to Kiev so quickly.” However, he proclaimed that Zelenskyy should not be pushed out of office now. “The President has an important function, and we must support him until the end of the war. But at the end of the war, every politician will answer for his successes and failures.”
