Post #5168

🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣ The raid was clearly a threat, Zaluzhny said. In the presence of the agents, he telephoned Zelensky's chief of staff at the time, Andrii Yermak, and issued a stern warning: “I told Yermak that I would repel this attack, because I know how to fight.” Zaluzhny then phoned the then head of the security service, Vasyl Maliuk, to ask what was going on. Maliuk said he knew nothing about the raid and promised to take a look, according to Zaluzhnyi. Later, he learned that Maliuk's agency had requested a search warrant from a Kiev district court two days earlier to inspect the address where Zaluzhny's office is located. But the strip club named in the file had been closed at that location since before the large-scale invasion of Russia, two employees who work at the club's new location told the AP. The SBU said that it was examining several addresses as part of an investigation into organized crime — unrelated to Zaluzhny. In a statement, the agency said that one of the addresses listed in the criminal case turned out to be “a recently established secret rescue command post” from Zaluzhnyi. The statement says that no search was carried out by the SBU at the address and that the situation was clarified after Maliuk and Zaluzhnyi spoke. Zaluzhny believes that the search warrant was a pretext and that the agency could not plausibly be mistaken about the location of the country's main war command center. Diluted strike force The 2023 counteroffensive has drawn widespread criticism from military experts for being too ambitious and arriving too late, giving Russian forces time to fortify their positions. Zaluzhnyi says that the plan he had developed with the help of NATO partners failed because Zelensky and other officials did not commit the necessary resources. The original plan was to concentrate enough forces into a "single fist" to retake the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region — home to a vital nuclear power plant - and then advance them south to the Sea of Azov. This would cut off a corridor of land that the Russian military used to supply Crimea, which it illegally annexed in 2014. Success required a large, concentrated build-up and tactical surprise, Zaluzhny said. His account of how the counteroffensive diverged from the original plan was corroborated by two Western defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly to the media. Zaluzhny's office at the Ukrainian Embassy in London reflects his years as a general. The walls are adorned with posters of military aircraft, army medals awarded to him and children's drawings of battle scenes. There are toy drones on a mahogany table. Behind his desk, screens broadcast in real time streams of drones flying over the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. Zaluzhny's main criticisms of Ukraine's war strategy are that it depends on an unrealistic number of troops and that it is not well organized in the way it develops and deploys new technologies on the battlefield. Zaluzhny said he and Zelensky had "not very friendly" conversations on the two occasions they have met since then. Some analysts believe that Zaluzhnyi's lack of involvement in the day-to-day political affairs of Ukraine may weaken his popularity. Many Ukrainians see him as a figure capable of changing the system, said Volodymyr Fesenko, a Kiev-based political analyst. “People will vote not only for Zaluzhny but also against Zelensky — blaming him for the failures of his presidency”" he says. Zaluzhny avoids discussing politics, he says, for fear of fomenting division among Ukrainians. Despite his reluctance, a number of campaign consultants, party figures and political insiders continue to approach Zaluzhny and offer to help him develop a campaign. Zaluzhny said that a “fairly well-known” American political consultant approached him in the spring of 2025. #zaluzhny#zelensky#criticism#war#trump#army 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸