That Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would fire his top general, Valerii Zaluzhny, was rumored for months, leaked and officially denied last week, and finally confirmed yesterday, when Zelensky replaced Zaluzhny with General Oleksandr Syrsky.
The leaks and denials seem to have reflected political maneuverings behind the scenes. Zaluzhny, who is charismatic and popular with both the public and the troops, is widely thought to have political ambitions. The notion that Zelensky might have been about to fire him because he felt threatened by the general’s popularity helped stir public sentiment in Zaluzhny’s favor.
But Zelensky countered adroitly with a different narrative: Two years into the war—after the counteroffensive Zaluzhny designed and led had stalled out—the president sought to refresh his national-security team. Zelensky asked for Zaluzhny’s resignation, but the general refused, requiring the president to fire him. The president then offered the general other prominent positions in the national-security apparatus, but Zaluzhny declined them. When Zelensky brought down the axe, he did it gracefully and thanked Zaluzhny for his contributions to the country.
Syrsky is a less popular figure. He led the bruising campaign in Bakhmut, where Ukraine took terrible losses in order to impose even greater losses on Russia. Ukrainian troops reportedly call him “the Butcher.” But he is also, by Zelensky’s description, Ukraine’s most experienced commander. He will now be under enormous pressure to live up to Zaluzhny’s performance: Any sign that the war effort is faltering as a result of Zelensky’s decision to replace the top general will become a political liability to the president.
Whatever one may think of Zelensky’s decision, it is a sign that some things are working as they should in Ukraine’s battle-weary democracy. In civil-military relations, the answers to two questions determine whether a country’s military is safely subordinate to its elected leadership. The first is whether the president can fire anyone in uniform. Doing so needn’t be costless—in fact, civilian leaders can pay a considerable political price for relieving popular military leaders. When President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur, he worried that MacArthur might become the Republican nominee in the 1952 election (as he had sought to be in 1948). President Abraham Lincoln dismissed General George McClellan and actually did have to run against him for president in 1864.
Zelensky will likewise pay a price for firing Zaluzhny. The Ukrainian president may well have unleashed a political rival who will now feel at liberty to criticize him and his policies. If Syrsky proves less capable than his predecessor, or if a dip in morale interferes with recruiting or saps the fighting spirit of Ukrainian forces, the public will blame Zelensky. And any suggestion that politicking in Kyiv is damaging the war effort could put American support, already faltering, in further jeopardy.
The second question is whether the military will carry out policies its leaders disagree with. Many in the American military leadership had grave doubts about the wisdom of invading Iraq, about the resourcing of the war in Afghanistan, and certainly about the conduct of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan. But in a free society, the military doesn’t get to choose political objectives or determine how much blood, treasure, and national effort to commit to the wars it fights. Only the president gets to make those decisions, because the president, unlike military leaders, is accountable to the public via elections.
Zaluzhny seems to have had differences with Zelensky over the resources necessary to accomplish the government’s war aim of driving Russian forces out of Ukraine. The general was apparently pressing the president to mobilize an additional 500,000 soldiers—and he publicly pitched this view to prestigious Western media outlets, reportedly to presidential irritation.
Zaluzhny’s professional military judgment evidently clashed with the president’s professional political and economic judgment of what the country could bear. Both sides in such a dispute can be right; when civil-military relations function well, the parties work toward compromise. If the relationship becomes too brittle for that, a president may have reason to fire his military commander.
Elected leaders in free societies have a right to work with military leaders whom they trust to share their priorities and appreciate the political constraints they work within. To the extent that Zaluzhny seems to have lost Zelensky’s trust, it was Zelensky’s prerogative to replace him. But the move could be costly. The war is bogging down, and Zaluzhny was popular both with troops and with the foreign militaries whose support is crucial to Ukraine’s survival. Kyiv certainly can’t afford for its allies to wonder whether petty politics are interfering with its war effort—and it might have done better to endure a difficult relationship than take the risk of alienating either domestic or international support.
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