Valerii Zaluzhnyi
Based on Wikipedia: Valerii Zaluzhnyi
The General Who Changed How Ukraine Fights
In 2019, Valerii Zaluzhnyi landed at Brussels airport for a NATO summit and was immediately detained. The reason? Russia had placed him on Interpol's international wanted list. Here was a Ukrainian general, arriving to meet with Western allies, being held at their request because Moscow considered him a threat worth hunting across borders. He had to call Ukraine's ambassador to NATO from custody to get himself released.
That story captures something essential about Zaluzhnyi. Years before most of the world learned his name, Russia already knew exactly who he was and what he represented: a new kind of Ukrainian military leader who would prove to be their most formidable adversary.
From Soviet Technical School to Supreme Command
Zaluzhnyi was born in 1973 in a city that has since changed its name twice—first called Novohrad-Volynskyi during Soviet times, now known as Zviahel. This renaming reflects Ukraine's broader journey away from its Soviet past, a journey Zaluzhnyi himself would come to embody.
His path to military leadership was methodical. After graduating from a machine-building technical school with honors in 1991—the very year the Soviet Union collapsed—he entered the Odesa Institute of Land Forces. What followed was a textbook military career: platoon commander, company commander, battalion commander. Each rung of the ladder, climbed in sequence.
But Zaluzhnyi wasn't just accumulating ranks. He was collecting education. In 2005, he entered the National Academy of Defence of Ukraine. In 2007, he graduated with a gold medal. In 2014, more studies. In 2020, a master's degree in International Relations from National University Ostroh Academy. This wasn't a general who stopped learning once he pinned on his stars.
Breaking from Soviet Military Doctrine
When President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appointed Zaluzhnyi as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in July 2021, Ukraine got something rare: a senior military leader who was willing to throw out the rulebook.
Soviet military doctrine—which had shaped Ukrainian military thinking for decades—was obsessively hierarchical. Every decision flowed upward, every order flowed downward, and nothing happened without paperwork and approval from above. This made armies slow and predictable.
Zaluzhnyi changed this almost immediately.
One of his first acts was radical: he authorized troops at the front to return fire without waiting for permission from headquarters. Think about what that means. Previously, if Russian forces attacked, Ukrainian soldiers might have needed approval from commanders kilometers away before they could shoot back. Wars are won and lost in seconds. Zaluzhnyi understood that waiting for bureaucratic approval could mean waiting to die.
He also eliminated what he called "unnecessary documents"—the endless paperwork that Soviet-style militaries use to track everything but which mostly just slows everything down. As he put it in a 2020 interview, he wanted to move away from "writing combat orders in the style of 1943."
The Invasion and the Validation
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, the world expected Ukraine to fall within days. United States intelligence reportedly gave Kyiv seventy-two hours. Russian forces expected to capture the capital in a lightning strike, decapitate the government, and install a puppet regime.
They were wrong.
What followed was one of the most stunning military upsets in modern history. Ukrainian forces, led by Zaluzhnyi, repelled the assault on Kyiv, drove Russian forces back from the capital region, and then launched counteroffensives that recaptured thousands of square kilometers of territory.
Ten days after the invasion began, Zelenskyy promoted Zaluzhnyi to the rank of General—the highest possible rank in Ukraine's military. International analysts praised his ability to adapt to rapidly changing battlefield conditions, his willingness to delegate authority to subordinates, and his skill at gathering and acting on intelligence.
Time magazine named him one of the hundred most influential people in the world. Within Ukraine, his approval rating soared to stratospheric levels—eighty-seven percent of Ukrainians expressed positive views of him in January 2023, rising to eighty-eight percent by December. For context, approval ratings that high are almost unheard of for any public figure in any democracy.
The Million-Dollar Donation
In January 2023, something unusual happened. Zaluzhnyi received a one-million-dollar inheritance from Gregory Stepanets, a Ukrainian-American he apparently had some connection to. It was the kind of windfall that might tempt anyone, especially someone earning a government salary in a war-torn country.
Zaluzhnyi donated all of it. Every dollar went to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and humanitarian organizations working in Ukraine. For a man who could have quietly pocketed the money—who would have blamed a wartime general for accepting an inheritance?—the decision reinforced the image of a leader who had transcended personal interest.
The Stalemate and the Tension
By late 2023, the war had changed character. The initial Russian assault had failed, but so had Ukraine's much-anticipated summer counteroffensive. The front lines had stabilized into something that looked increasingly like the Western Front of World War One: trenches, minefields, and grinding attrition.
In November 2023, Zaluzhnyi gave an interview to The Economist that made headlines around the world. "Just like in the First World War," he said, "we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate. There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough."
This was not what politicians wanted to hear.
Zelenskyy publicly criticized the statement. The president needed to maintain international support, which meant projecting confidence that Ukraine could win decisively. Zaluzhnyi was offering something different: honest military assessment.
The general didn't mince words about Russian casualties either. "Russia has lost at least 150,000 dead," he said. "In any other country such casualties would have stopped the war." But Russia, he acknowledged, had leadership willing to sacrifice soldiers on a scale that would topple governments elsewhere. He had underestimated that willingness.
The Dismissal
The tension between Zaluzhnyi and Zelenskyy had been building for months. They represented different imperatives: the general's duty to assess military reality honestly, the president's need to sustain political and international support through optimism.
On February 8, 2024, Zelenskyy replaced Zaluzhnyi as Commander-in-Chief. His successor was Oleksandr Syrskyi, previously commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces. In what might be seen as an acknowledgment of Zaluzhnyi's service—or perhaps an attempt to soften the blow—Zelenskyy simultaneously awarded him the title Hero of Ukraine, the nation's highest honor.
The formal dismissal came three months later, on May 9, 2024. The official reason given was "health grounds," though Zaluzhnyi was allowed to continue wearing his military uniform—an unusual provision that suggested the health explanation was diplomatic rather than literal.
From Battlefield to Diplomacy
What do you do with a wildly popular general you've just fired? If you're Zelenskyy, you send him to London.
In March 2024, Zaluzhnyi was appointed Ukraine's ambassador to the United Kingdom. It was a significant posting—Britain has been one of Ukraine's most steadfast supporters—but also a way to deploy a potential political rival to a position of honor far from domestic politics.
Zaluzhnyi presented his credentials formally in July 2024. By March 2025, he had taken on an additional role as Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency headquartered in London that deals with shipping and maritime safety—relevant work for a country whose grain exports depend on Black Sea shipping routes.
The Warning About Ukraine's Future
In May 2025, Zaluzhnyi addressed a technological weapons forum in Kyiv via video. His message was sobering.
"I hope that there are not people in this room who still hope for some kind of miracle or lucky sign that will bring peace to Ukraine, the borders of 1991 or 2022," he said. The borders of 1991 would mean all of Ukraine's internationally recognized territory, including Crimea. The borders of 2022 would mean the territory Ukraine controlled before the February invasion. Zaluzhnyi was suggesting that neither might be achievable.
"Ukraine is not capable of another war in terms of demography and economy," he continued. He recommended focusing on high-technology warfare as a matter of survival, given Ukraine's smaller population and constrained resources.
This was Zaluzhnyi being Zaluzhnyi: honest to the point of discomfort.
The Pipeline Mystery
There is one shadow over Zaluzhnyi's legacy that remains unresolved. In September 2022, explosions destroyed sections of the Nord Stream pipelines—underwater natural gas conduits that carried Russian gas to Germany. The sabotage was a geopolitically momentous act that cut one of Russia's economic lifelines to Europe.
Reporting by The Washington Post in 2023 and The Wall Street Journal in 2024 alleged that Zaluzhnyi and other Ukrainians carried out the operation. Zaluzhnyi has denied involvement. Neither the Ukrainian government nor any international authority has formally connected him to the sabotage. The full truth may not emerge for years, if ever.
What He Wrote Down
In December 2024, Zaluzhnyi released a memoir titled "My War," described as the first of a planned three-volume autobiography. His wife served as editor. For historians and military analysts, the book promises insights into the decisions that shaped one of the twenty-first century's most significant conflicts.
Earlier, in February 2024—just before his dismissal—Zaluzhnyi had published an essay laying out his strategic thinking. "The weakness of the international sanctions regime means Russia is still able to deploy its military-industrial complex in pursuit of a war of attrition against us," he wrote. He called for "mastery of an entire arsenal of relatively cheap, modern and highly effective, unmanned vehicles and other technological means."
His conclusion was stark: "This means nothing less than the wholesale redesign of battlefield operations—and the abandoning of outdated, stereotypical thinking."
It was the same message he had brought to the Ukrainian military from his first day as Commander-in-Chief: the old ways would not save them.
The Political Question
Zaluzhnyi has been cited as a potential candidate for Ukraine's next presidential election. Polls consistently rank him among the leading candidates. This creates an unusual dynamic: a wartime president who fired his most popular general, who then appointed that general as ambassador, who may eventually face that general in an election.
For now, Zaluzhnyi serves in London, represents Ukraine at the International Maritime Organization, and presumably works on the remaining volumes of his autobiography. Streets in Ukrainian cities bear his name. A village in Kharkiv Oblast was slated to be renamed in his honor.
He is married with two daughters. The older serves in the military, following her father's path. The younger is studying to become a physician—perhaps a recognition that wars require healers as much as warriors.
The Lesson of Zaluzhnyi
What made Zaluzhnyi effective wasn't just tactical skill or personal courage, though he demonstrated both. It was his willingness to look clearly at reality and act on what he saw rather than what doctrine prescribed or politics demanded.
He saw that Soviet-style hierarchies made armies slow, so he flattened decision-making. He saw that the war had become a stalemate, so he said so publicly, even though it cost him his job. He saw that Ukraine couldn't win through attrition against a larger adversary, so he advocated for technological transformation.
Whether history validates all his judgments remains to be seen. Wars are decided by factors beyond any individual's control: economics, demographics, international politics, the choices of adversaries. But for a crucial period of one of the most consequential conflicts since World War Two, Zaluzhnyi shaped how Ukraine fought—and the fact that Ukraine is still fighting may be his most significant achievement.