Zaluzhny is Ukraine's best - sacking him is a mistake, warns retired General

A strategist and retired Australian Army Major General has described the dismissal of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine by President Volodymyr Zelensky as a mistake.

Maj Gen Mick Ryan said that the decision by Ukraine's leader to remove General Valerii Zaluzhny was poorly timed due to factors both at home and abroad.

"[While] it is unsurprising that Zaluzhny is gone, I do think it's a mistake. I think Zaluzhny is as good as they've got," he said.

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The former Major General said: "Something had to give. This tension in the civil military relationship has been there for a long time. Evidently two years.

"It hasn't been helped by some of the comments in papers by both sides, but at the end of the day when the counter-offensive didn’t go as well as everyone had hoped, someone was going to have to go.

"It was a military failure at the end of the day, not withstanding about political inference about timing and stuff, so that person had to be a military person."

The removal of Gen Zaluzhny comes after the Ukrainian counter-offensive, which began in June 2023, was unable to yield a decisive outcome in the conflict.

The operation began to lose momentum three months into the campaign before being halted by the conditions caused by the Ukrainian winter.

It has been announced that Gen Zaluzhny has been replaced by Colonel-General Oleksandr 'The Snow Leopard' Syrskyi, who has led Ukraine's ground forces since 2019.

Maj Gen Ryan added: "[Zaluzhny] is a thinker about modern war at the right level.

"He is well respected, and I think the timing in the middle of their mobilisation debate and the middle of the US debate on military aid is terrible. The optics of this is that it really had a reputational impact of Zelensky."

Great Britain announced at the beginning of 2024 that a military support package of £2.5bn would be sent to Ukraine, however debate has begun in the United States in the lead up to the upcoming election on what American support for the country will look like.

By 27 December 2023, the United States had sent $44.9bn (£35bn) to Ukraine.