Unclear how Zelenskiy’s removal of military commander will improve Ukraine’s position
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s decision to replace his most senior military commander may solve a political problem, but it is not clear how it can improve Ukraine’s weakening position on the battlefield.
It was clear that the outgoing Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi had lost the confidence of the Ukrainian leader, who had come to be wary of the general’s popularity and saw him as a political threat. By refusing to resign when asked by the president last week, Zaluzhnyi had created an untenable situation at the top.
Eight days later, Zaluzhnyi has recognised reality, as Zelenskiy has made it clear he wants a change of leadership after the failed summer counteroffensive. His choice of Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, however, currently commander of land forces, is not seen as a radical departure.
“Syrskyi is close to the president,” said Oleksiy Goncharenko, an opposition Ukrainian MP close to Zaluzhnyi. “And the most important thing for Zelenskiy is that he thinks that Syrskyi is absolutely not a political person. That is his most valuable characteristic.”
While Zaluzhnyi came of age as Ukraine became independent, Syrskyi, at 58, is eight years older and was trained at the Higher Military Command school in Moscow. But he has lived in Ukraine since the 1980s and was critical in its defence in the early phases of the war.
Syrskyi was responsible for defending Kyiv, organising the defences of the capital into an inner and outer ring in the dramatic weeks of the war. The outer ring largely held, helped at a critical moment by a decision to blow dams of the Irpin river north-west of the capital, flooding ground that prevented the Russian advance.
Speaking to the Guardian a year later, Syrskyi described last-ditch defence as “an example of what I said about careful planning”, highlighting the fact that Ukrainians had understood that the river, unusually, flowed away from the reservoir north of the capital and could be turned into an impassable obstacle at a village called Moshchun.
“So, realising that we were outnumbered at Moshchun, we made a small opening in the upper part of the dam. We used the features of the landscape. We raised the sluices and flooded the entire area in front of Moshchun that had been occupied by the enemy,” Syrskyi said.
Subsequently, however, Syrskyi was involved in a failed attempt last summer to retake Bakhmut on the eastern front, an effort that drew criticism from the US as a distraction from what Washington believed: that Ukraine’s resources should have concentrated on achieving a breakthrough in the south.
Ukrainian soldiers generally remained supportive of Zaluzhnyi, who cultivated a following amongst the Azov brigade and other nationalist forces – while there is greater scepticism of Syrskyi. One critic described him as “very Soviet thinking” and another as a soldier more willing to tolerate higher casualties, which may affect Kyiv’s efforts to mobilise more