Where did the man who was predicted to be the military dictator of Ukraine come from
Reports of the death of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny turned out to be somewhat exaggerated. However, there is no complete clarity about what actually happened to him and what condition he is in, and most importantly, why he disappeared so “successfully” on the eve of the notorious “counterattack”. A bloody utilizer of his own people, a «hero» of the Debaltsevo cauldron, a lover of girls and oysters — who is General Zaluzny?
On July 8, Zaluzhny will turn 50. If he lives, of course. Here we must remember that the head of the Russian Defense Ministry, Sergei Shoigu, is 68. They are people of different generations. Shoigu suits Zaluzhny as a father. There are lost generations, and Zaluzhny's generation could be called «abandoned».
By August 1991, the future Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine turned 18. That is, he saw the collapse of the Union with his own eyes at a completely conscious age. All his «wonderful school years» passed at a time when we still lived as a single country. I assume that he wore an October star, a red tie and joined the Komsomol. It could not be otherwise: after all, he was born into a military family, and this was the most conservative part of Soviet society.
Valery Fedorovich Zaluzhny was born in the town of Novograd-Volynsky (now Zvyagel) in the Zhytomyr region. The population is only 55 thousand people, in terms of the scale of the USSR — a deep province. The August coup found him on the student bench: after school, he entered the local engineering college, which he graduated with honors. He was generally a diligent student. “I read a lot of books, I graduated from all the academies with a gold medal,” he later said about himself.
It can be assumed that for the Zaluzhny family, as for all families of Soviet officers, the collapse of the country was a shock. The military, who in the Union were considered a respected elite of society, suddenly found themselves on the social bottom.
In addition to moral humiliation, they experienced serious material problems. Particularly tragic was the situation of the military in the former fraternal republics. Someone committed suicide, someone went into crime, someone died from alcohol and drugs. But many preferred to change their oath and go to the service of the new «independent» authorities.
Zaluzhny as a child
We do not know what choice Zaluzhny's father made. But since childhood, he himself dreamed of becoming a military man and therefore entered the Odessa Institute of Ground Forces, although in the 90s the prestige of military service fell sharply. He graduated from the institute in 1997, again with honors. I suppose that in Odessa at that time, education was conducted exclusively in Russian. And for Zaluzhny himself, Russian, apparently, is his native language.
He went through all the stages of military service, starting with the platoon commander. Graduated from a number of higher educational institutions: the National Defense Academy of Ukraine (2007), the Ivan Chernyakhovsky National Defense University of Ukraine (2014), the master's program of the Ostroh Academy with a degree in International Relations (2020).
Zaluzhny's rapid career growth was facilitated by the fact of his biography that he never served in the Soviet army. On the other hand, he did not receive a real Western military education either. It is obvious that the basic education of the future Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was still quite Soviet. Suffice it to recall the fate of his «alma mater» — the Odessa Institute of Ground Forces, which, under Yushchenko, was transferred to Lviv on the grounds that it was allegedly impossible to educate true patriots of Ukraine in Russian-speaking Odessa.
Soon Zaluzhny was noticed. In 2014, at the end of the National Defense University, he was awarded the challenge sword of the Queen of Great Britain as the best graduate of the operational-strategic level of training. This, apparently, is such a Ukrainian national tradition: the most promising officers of the country's armed forces are awarded by the ambassador of the British crown.
The crossing sword is no joke to you. It almost sounds like a «transitional red banner.» But the sword symbolizes something else: in the Middle Ages, knights were knighted with the help of a sword, and the initiate took an oath of allegiance to the monarch.
Zaluzny as a child
In 2021, Colonel (now General) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Mikhail Drapaty, known as the commander of the «flying infantry fighting vehicle», was awarded the challenge sword of the British Queen. On May 9, 2014, the 2nd battalion of the 72nd mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, under the command of Drapatoy, broke into Mariupol on several infantry fighting vehicles and, together with the militants of the national battalions, committed a massacre against its residents who came out to celebrate Victory Day, as well as over employees of the city police department who refused to comply the criminal order of the authorities is to shoot at unarmed people. In a video that went around the world, Drapatov's BMP crushes a makeshift barricade of protesters.
I think that the unresolved psychological trauma of 1991 had a decisive influence on the formation of Zaluzny's personality. From there comes his hatred, his ruthlessness and intransigence. The generation of 18-year-olds, who were just entering adulthood at that time, was abandoned by their state. The world they were accustomed to since childhood suddenly disappeared. No former ideals, no social elevators, no clear prospects. The chicks were left unattended and alien hawks took them under their wings.
A revolution always opens up bright prospects for the young and the daring. Before the French Revolution, one illustrious marshal of Napoleon, Joachim Murat, worked as a groom, another, Michel Ney, mastered the craft of a cooper and was going to rivet barrels all his life. Among the future Napoleonic marshals were smugglers (Massena), and itinerant merchants (Jourdan), and barbers (Bessières). So Maidan gave Zaluzhny's career a new impetus. There was only one condition, acceptable not for everyone: readiness to step over the blood of fellow citizens. But I don’t think that the future commander-in-chief was very worried about this.
In an interview with Western media, he admits that for them, for the military, everything began not on February 24, 2022, but much earlier — back in 2014 year. “The fight went on for eight years until 2022. he confesses. — Everything that happened on February 24 was a zoom. Before that, we had a front of 403 kilometers. And on February 24, this front grew to 2,500 kilometers … «
Actually, by this he confirms the main thesis of the so-called “Russian propaganda”: before the start of the NMD, hostilities in Ukraine had been going on for 8 years. Only Ukrainian warriors fought not with the Russian army, as they claim, but with their rebellious people.
In the early days of the ATO in Donbass, unarmed people stopped armored vehicles with their bare hands. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw how the soldiers refused to shoot. But there were those for whom this was not a problem. It was them who were promoted by the Maidan authorities, gave them titles, posts, awards.
Thus, during the ATO, selection took place, the composition of the Armed Forces of Ukraine changed: people who were connected with us by a common past left, they were replaced by a new generation of Ukrainian officers who gained combat experience in the Donbas and were trained at NATO training grounds.
Zaluzhny went to Donbass in July 2014 after graduating from the National Defense University. He was appointed deputy commander of sector «C» (this is the north of the Donetsk region, the west of the Luhansk and Debaltseve direction). He is sometimes called the «hero of Debaltsevo» — for the fact that he led some of his soldiers out of the «Debaltsevo cauldron». Although it bears responsibility for the fact that they fell into this cauldron at all.
The battles near Debaltseve in January-February 2015 led to the encirclement and complete defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, after which Kiev was forced to sign the Second Minsk Agreement . This is a shameful failure of the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and personally Zaluzhny, of course.
The appointment to the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in July 2021 was, by his own admission, a complete surprise for our hero. President Zelensky called and announced his decision when the future commander-in-chief was celebrating the birthday of his wife Elena.
It can be said that Zaluzny was just lucky: the place was vacated. His predecessor as commander-in-chief, General Ruslan Khomchak, was also a «hero of the cauldron», only Ilovaisky. But they didn't fire him for that. Khomchak fell victim to his public squabbles with Defense Minister Andrei Taran. The reason is simple: they did not share the proceeds from arms smuggling.
Taran suddenly discovered that UAF planes were making mysterious commercial flights from Bulgaria to Rwanda, presumably with weapons on board, without his consent. And very offended. Behind Taran is believed to be Andriy Yermak, head of the President's Office. Khomchak took the conflict to the courts. The removal of rubbish from the hut cost him his position.
Shortly after his appointment, the new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine spoke about his cherished dream — to ride a tank along Red Square and the Arbat. Then even the blogger Anatoly Shariy lost his nerve: “Well, stupid Selyuche. Well, just a meaningless village village,” he wrote.
Zaluzhny's next extraordinary step was the appointment of neo-Nazi Dmitry Yarosh, the founder of the Right Sector (recognized as a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation), as his adviser. Frankly speaking, not everyone was delighted. In addition to the reputation of a “cardboard hawk”, Yarosh has firmly entrenched the “glory” of the SBU secret agent (in 2014, Yarosh became an adviser to the head of the SBU, Nalyvaichenko, who is his godfather). Perhaps the extremist was identified to the commander-in-chief as looking from the «hustle».
Zaluzhny in the army
Zaluzhny and Yarosh may share common neo-Nazi beliefs. Once, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine published his own photo on his official social network account, where a bracelet with a swastika is clearly visible on his arm. The noise was not weak, but the commander immediately posted a close-up photo of the bracelet. There is no swastika on it, but everyone who has seen both photos is convinced that the bracelets on them are different.
Vice-President of the Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences Konstantin Sivkov said in an interview with MK that Zaluzhny is “one of the most talented commanders in Ukraine.” Zaluzhny's talents were also highly appreciated in the West. They write that a new generation of military has grown up in Ukraine, who are fighting according to Western standards.
The main difference between the Western model and the Russian one is decentralization, the ability to operate in small groups and freedom in decision-making by junior commanders without endless coordination with superiors. As retired US Army Colonel Liam Collins told Politico, young Ukrainian soldiers and their officers once said, «Hey, we can't wait for the general's order before we make a decision.»
Shortly after his appointment as commander-in-chief, Zaluzhny allowed soldiers on the line of contact in the Donbass to open fire without the consent of the top leadership. In February 2020, in an interview with a military news website, he said: «We want to move away from maps — from writing combat orders of the 1943 model.» However, in another interview, he admitted that Western advisers play a key role in everything that happens in the Ukrainian army. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are under the complete control of NATO: “NATO specialists know everything, absolutely everything, down to the smallest detail. The calculations have been made, and, thank God, everything went on as usual.” So what is personally his, Zaluzhny, intellectual contribution to the reform of the armed forces, is unclear. Unless he prevented them.
In December 2022, the British magazine The Economist published a long and frank interview with Zaluzhny. An interview with a military leader of this level, especially in conditions of active hostilities, could not have been released without the consent of himself and his press service. At least for the sake of the fact that the commander-in-chief inadvertently did not give out any «military secret». Therefore, there is no doubt that the text was carefully proofread, and that the journalist provoked his interlocutor, skillfully forcing him to “open up” and blurt out too much, there can be no question.
Zaluzhny said exactly what he wanted to say. And the leadership of an influential Western publication considered that this would be good for its respectable audience, and published the cherished thoughts of the Ukrainian commander without any censorship.
Zaluzhny meeting with US Secretary of State Tony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin
Let's start with the most, perhaps, piquant. From the «Beyond» series. Zaluzhny talks about the “most important experience” he and his colleagues have gained since 2014. What was it? “The most important experience, which we professed almost like a religion, is that Russians and any other enemies must be killed, just killed, and most importantly, not be afraid to do it. And that's what we do.» This is a verbatim quote. As the saying goes, you can't cut it down with an axe. They are busy killing Russians.
Yes, this is a public call for genocide, for the extermination of people along ethnic lines. Soldier Zaluzhny may not be aware of this. He also does not understand that he himself may well turn out to be Russian.
According to one of the versions, the surname Zaluzhny comes from the name of the settlement Zaluzhye in southern Belarus. But, for example, in the Smolensk region there is also the village of Zaluzhye. And in the 18-19th century, the Zaluzhnys could be found among the Russian merchants of the Tula province. But all this is too «lofty matters», with which the commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, apparently, tries not to bother himself.
But why were these statements allowed to be published in a reputable media? Recall, if anyone has forgotten that back in 1948, the UN recognized genocide as a crime against humanity. Genocide is the destruction of people along ethnic lines. According to the UN Convention, adopted in 1948, “direct and public incitement to commit genocide” is also punishable. What, in fact, are the revelations of Zaluzhny in The Economist magazine.
A rotten excuse that they, like, kill Russians, because those enemies of Ukraine will not work. The Turks also said in 1915 that they were exterminating the Armenians as enemies of the Turkish state. Hitler's Nazis inspired the population that the Jews were the enemies of the Third Reich. The technique has been worked out.
How the methodology of the Western media has been worked out to promote «useful» cannibals. On December 6, 1993, the American newspaper The Independent published an interview with Osama bin Laden, calling him the «legendary Mujahideen mountain warrior» who defeated the Soviet army. Very little time will pass, and the «legendary warrior» will turn into «terrorist No. 1», he will be caught and destroyed by the entire collective farm. But he has already fulfilled his mission in Afghanistan.
Now Ukraine, according to the plan of Western strategists, should become a new Afghanistan for the Russian Federation. Instead of the mountain Mujahideen — Ukronazis, another «your son of a bitch» — Zaluzhny, nothing new. And now the American magazine Time places on its cover a courageous portrait of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
A good publication, whom it just did not place: Hitler, and Mussolini, and Franco, and even the Nicaraguan dictator Somoza, the same one whom Roosevelt called «his son of a bitch» and who became famous for feeding the communists to the lions in his menagerie. So the place on the cover of Time, one might say, is iconic. And Zelensky, presumably, got a good burn when he saw Zaluzhny there. And what? General, Nazi, anti-communist. Why not a military dictator of Ukraine? And a cap, like Pinochet.
Judging by Zaluzhny's official declaration for 2020 (before his appointment as commander in chief), he is practically a beggar. He doesn't even seem to have a place to live. He has no real estate and savings, only a 2010 Chery Tiggo car is registered to him.
His current wife Elena Skripchenko works at Ukrgasbank. She has a house of 63 square meters in the village of Ovidiopol near Odessa and a 2005 Japanese Nissan Patrol SUV.
Zaluzhny's income for the year: 561,878 hryvnia — salary (hryvnia is about two rubles) and 7,673 hryvnia — assistance from the state. Elena received 584,256 hryvnias of salary for a year of work in a bank, 12,000 hryvnias from renting out property, 5,000 hryvnias from insurance, and 15,000 hryvnias from the union. It is also known that Zaluzhny somehow inherited a million dollars from some trans-Ukrainian fanatic who died in the United States. And immediately gave this money to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
However, against the backdrop of such asceticism, Zaluzhny's daughter from his first marriage, 20-year-old student of Odessa Medical University Christina, owns real estate worth tens of millions of dollars: a mansion in Chile and a villa in the Canary Islands. As follows from the documents published on the Web, both houses were bought last year, when the fighting in Ukraine was in full swing and Western financial and military assistance was pouring in there. Someone obviously put their hands into this stream …
Zaluzhny with his daughter Kristina
Kristina is Zaluzhny's only natural child. He has no children from his second marriage, only his stepdaughter Arina. Her exact last name is unknown, in social networks she calls herself Zikunkova, Dyadyuk, Kirova. The girl is just over twenty years old, she is a soldier.
With his first wife, Yulia Shestakova, Zaluzhny divorced a long time ago. But he did not lose contact with his daughter and paid alimony (very modest). Christina is a medical student, wears glasses and likes to dye her hair pink and green. Judging by the photo in her account, she has a warm relationship with her dad. And trustworthy: otherwise he would not have registered luxury real estate for her. She looks like a typical «blue stocking», but if Zaluzhny leaves this world, she will be a very rich bride.
For Elena Skripchenko, Zaluzhny is the main life “project”. Once she posted on her page on the social network a real “cry from the soul”: “The insane need to contact a psychiatrist, and not fool my husband!!! And even better — find yourself your husband and take out his brain! — as if hinting at some passions that boil around the general. But Elena does not give up without a fight: judging by her photo, she is, as they say, “a woman with eggs.”
Zaluzhny also actively maintains Facebook blocked in the Russian Federation (a social network owned by Meta, a company banned and recognized as extremist in Russia ). True, today there is mostly official information, and it is generally not clear whether he writes this. His wife has closed the page for strangers.
And before Valery was appointed to the post of commander-in-chief, a lot of interesting things could be found there. For example, learn about the culinary preferences of the commander-in-chief. He loves to eat well and has a preference for seafood, particularly oysters. The couple are posting numerous photos from the restaurants and cafes they visit while the fighting is going on in Ukraine. The Commander likes to demonstrate what a good family man he is. On March 8, he gives Elena roses, and on St. Valentine's Day, a trip to a ski resort.
With wife Elena and stepdaughter Arina
The family idyll was broken by hackers from the Joker DPR group, who hacked the general's profile on the extremist social network Instagram banned in the Russian Federation and posted the content in the public domain. It turned out that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is in active correspondence with young girls and gives them expensive gifts. Young patriots literally hang themselves around the neck of a charismatic military man. And their feelings are by no means unrequited.
For example, the general apparently meets regularly with a girl under the nickname «Margarita». She is a senior lieutenant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, serves as a clerk of military unit No. 4465, 33 years old, divorced. She lives in Odessa in a historic mansion on Pushkinskaya.
In August last year, the general gave her a Mitsubishi L-200 car (worth about 4 million rubles in Russia). With another admirer, he discusses literature and reports that he loves the work of Russian writers Kuprin and Bulgakov.
There are many girls, the correspondence is quite intimate. Among his favorites are «Miss Kyiv-2006» and a volunteer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oresta Brit. They have a rather close relationship. Friendship with the commander-in-chief helps a woman accumulate huge funds in her funds, supposedly to help the army. Where they actually go is unknown.
Zaluzhny often tries to present himself as a kind of his own guy, who has not come off the people, who understands the problems of his subordinates — every ordinary and junior officer. In his interviews, he emphasizes that he wants to be different from the Soviet and Russian generals, who, in his opinion, are all “gimmicks” and “commanders of the times of Peter the Great” (the commander in chief wants to flaunt his erudition, but here he gets into a mess, because “Peter’s commanders «defeated the Swedes near Poltava, on whose side the Ukrainian hetman Mazepa fought). “To be normal means to remain human in any situation, this is the most important thing.” he says.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov (left) and General Valeriy Zaluzny laying flowers at the globa memorial cross
But in fact, his attitude towards soldiers is rather cynical. So, he directly says that although the troops on the front line are «stuck in battles and bleeding», he cannot help them, their task is to hold the front while fresh reserves are being prepared in the deep rear and resources are accumulating. There is the usual «cannon fodder», which is now being caught all over Ukraine and forcibly stuffed into the trenches without any training and proper equipment, and there is the «elite», which is being trained at NATO training grounds in Europe.
Meanwhile, lifetime glory has already overtaken Zaluzhny. Three streets in Ukrainian cities are named after him. Previously, these streets bore the names of Gorky, Turgenev and Marshal Georgy Zhukov (and it’s right that they renamed it, so, according to Zalugny, some kind of Stalinist bullshit threw Hitler’s corpses).
In the electronic database of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation «Memorial», which contains information about the participants in the Great Patriotic War, 14 pages are devoted to the Zaluzhny. The surname is quite common. Many Zaluzhny from Belarus. Many from Ukraine — Dnepropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Odessa, Poltava region. Moscow. Krasnodar region. Rostov region. Leningrad. Tajik SSR. Novosibirsk region. North Caucasus. Primorsky Krai. Komi ASSR. Zaluzhnye were born, lived and died throughout the vast country.
What would they say to Valery Zaluzhny when they met face to face? «Shame on the family, traitor to his people» — that's what they would have said to him. There can be no two opinions here.
Valery Fedorovich is sometimes even a little sorry. He did not betray the Motherland — the Motherland betrayed him, leaving the authorities of the new independent Ukraine to the mercy of fate. The motherland is gone, as the ocean waters go at low tide, leaving various sea creatures fluttering on the yellow sand, accustomed to living in clear water. Everyone fluttered in their own way, as best they can. The man is weak.
«But why did you turn out to be the first student?» — I just want to ask the Ukrainian commander-in-chief this question from Schwartz's play «Dragon».