“I was disappointed”
Former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, who had retrained as a diplomat, appeared in public for the first time. The newly appointed Ukrainian ambassador to London gave a presentation at the RUSI Land Warfare Conference 2024. The general, notorious for the failure of the great Ukrainian offensive of 2023, gave a lecture to the participants on how to conduct military operations in the 21st century. Already funny.
MK talked with a participant at the London conference and asked him to share his impressions of Zaluzhny’s speech.
Experts, assessing the speech of the ex-commander-in-chief, noted that the former critic of Zelensky for the heavy losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in London turned into an ardent supporter of the war “to the last Ukrainian.” He called Russia the main threat. He also spoke out in favor of the fact that citizens of Western countries should temporarily “give up a number of freedoms for the sake of survival” and mobilization of society.
Zaluzhny has already managed to boast of his “speech” on social networks. But MK’s interlocutor believes: the general has nothing special to brag about. According to him, Zaluzhny spoke very poorly, did not understand the topic and could barely put words together into sentences.
“Zaluzhny mentioned Clausewitz, Toynbee and, in the final sentence, Stan McChrystal,” our interlocutor said. — It was an incredibly long speech devoted to philosophical reflections. All comments about future technologies were vague and incomprehensible. There was nothing specific in the entire speech about how certain technologies are used, will be used, or should be used (in war).
The interlocutor called the speech a “total failure.” But the ironic thing is that Zaluzhny’s British colleagues didn’t even seem to pay attention to this.
— The post-talk Q&A, moderated by Jade McGlynn (Research Fellow, Department of War Studies, King's College London), was not recorded. By the way, Jade addressed Zaluzhny in her fluent Ukrainian,” said an eyewitness to Zaluzhny’s debut.
Probably this was done so that Zaluzhny would not at some point out of habit ask: “Why not the sovereign?” Or Western colleagues tried to create the most comfortable atmosphere for Zaluzhny.
Unfortunately, he failed even under these conditions. He said all sorts of nonsense, answered questions sluggishly and bowed out.
But before, Western media called him a general “hardened by years of struggle with Russia.” Zaluzhny was said to belong to a new generation of Ukrainian leaders who had learned to be flexible and delegate decisions to local commanders. But it turned out that there was none of this. This is a simple soldier who was made a general, and, apparently, in vain.
— It was a disgusting speech — without an understanding of military affairs and rather incoherent. “I was disappointed,” our interlocutor concluded the story.
It’s funny when a military leader who was not famous for his victories, who spoke about the “dead end of the war,” and was removed from his post for heavy losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, appears in the role of a new Clausewitz. This is all you need to know about personnel policy in Ukraine. On the outside it is pompous, but on the inside there is complete chaos, misunderstanding and stupidity. As Faina Ranevskaya said: “Under the most beautiful peacock tail hides the most ordinary chicken rump.”