Vast majority of Ukrainians back head of armed forces despite frictions with Zelenskiy

The vast majority of Ukrainians would not support the sacking of Valery Zaluzhnyi from his position as head of the armed forces, a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed on Wednesday.

Despite attempts to demonstrate unity during the war with Russia, signs of friction between commander-in-chief Zaluzhnyi and president Volodymyr Zelenskiy have been evident for weeks, spurring domestic media speculation that the army chief could be fired.

The poll found that only 2 per cent of Ukrainians would actively support Mr Zelenskiy removing Gen Zaluzhnyi from his post, while 72 per cent would view such a move “negatively”. The pollsters surveyed 1,200 people living around Ukrainian-controlled territory on December 4th-10th.

The public’s trust in Gen Zaluzhnyi stood at 92 per cent, the poll found, compared with 77 per cent per cent of people who trust Mr Zelenskiy. Both those levels are very high.

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Gen Zaluzhnyi oversaw the major 2023 counteroffensive that failed to retake swathes of Russian-occupied land, but he is very popular with many Ukrainians after beating back Russian forces last year.

Mr Zelenskiy’s trust levels have dipped slightly this year as the mood darkened after the counteroffensive made little headway and optimism over a quick end to the war faded.

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Asked at news conference on Tuesday if he wanted to sack the commander-in-chief, Mr Zelenskiy denied there was any rift between them but said he wanted to see concrete results from the military leadership.

He avoided directly criticising Gen Zaluzhnyi, with whom he said he had a working relationship, but he also did not explicitly extend his full support for the general.

The tensions between the men became apparent in November after Gen Zaluzhnyi was quoted as saying the war had reached a stalemate, drawing a rebuke from the president’s office.

This week, the commander-in-chief criticised a decision that was made by Mr Zelenskiy to fire the heads of the regional military draft offices amid a crackdown on corruption this summer. He also said the war had not reached a stalemate.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday there is no current basis for talks between Russia and Ukraine as none of the prerequisites are in place.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ukraine withdrew from the negotiation process in 2022 “at Britain’s insistence” and “forbade” negotiations with Russia.

Ukraine says peace can only based on a full Russian withdrawal from all the territory it has seized since the war began in February 2022.

Russia has launched its fifth air attack this month targeting Kyiv, Ukrainian military officials have said.

Ukraine’s air force said air defence systems destroyed 18 out of 19 attack drones launched at Kyiv, Odesa, Kherson and other regions of Ukraine. It was not immediately clear how many were destroyed over Kyiv.

“According to preliminary information, there were no casualties or destruction in the capital,” Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app.

The Ukrainian air force also said Russia attacked the Kharkiv region in the east with two surface-to-air guided missiles. There were no casualties as a result of the assault, it added.

Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday morning that nine people, including four children, were injured in an overnight Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian southern city of Kherson. – Agencies