It is not clear what U.S. Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland communicated to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on her unscheduled drop-in on Kiev last week, but yesterday Zelenskyy came out bragging that not only would he push the UAF Commander-in-Chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny out of the leadership of the military, but he would also push out all who thought like Zaluzhny. Only those who were “convinced of victory” over Russia would stay in the government.
Only one week ago, on Jan. 29, Zelenskyy had tried to force the highly popular Zaluzhny to relinquish his post, causing what was reportedly a major pushback from the military. Nuland rushed over to Kiev, obviously in defense of the need to keep Zelenskyy in power, as part of the faction that wants to finish off Ukraine to bleed Russia as much as possible. (Zaluzhny has been reported to be open to, and possibly involved in, negotiations to end the slaughter.) Zelenskyy spent the week trying to identify military figures who would accept promotions and would support the “fight to the bloody end” approach. When asked yesterday by Gian Marco Chiocci of Italy’s Tg1 about his aborted effort to dump Zaluzhny, Zelenskyy answered:
“When we talk about this, I mean a replacement of a series of state leaders, not just in a single sector like the military. I’m thinking about this replacement, but you can’t say ‘here we replaced a single person’ … if we want to win, we must all push in the same direction, convinced of victory.... I have something serious in mind, which is not about a single person but about the direction of the country’s leadership.”
