Zaluzhny was against the offensive on the Kursk region, but Zelensky dismissed these words – Politico

Former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, opposed an offensive in the Kursk region.

This was reported by Politico, citing two high-ranking Ukrainian military officials.

According to them, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky first introduced the idea of an offensive in the Kursk region at the beginning of 2024 and insisted on this plan. Zaluzhnyi, who was then serving as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, was against this plan. He believed that the operation lacked a “clear second step” after Ukrainian units successfully breached the border.

“He never received a clear response from Zelensky. He felt that it would be a risky venture,” one of Politico’s sources noted.

Emil Ishkulov, the commander of the 80th Air Assault Brigade, who was dismissed in July amid protests by high-ranking officers advocating for him to remain in his position, also opposed the “operation” in the Kursk region. Politico’s sources claim that Ishkulov feared his brigade “could end up too vulnerable on Russian territory and that the number of casualties could sharply increase.”

“Zaluzhnyi’s question remains key: both Western and Ukrainian skeptics fear that the Armed Forces of Ukraine could end up trapped and suffer a demoralizing defeat. Their argument is that deploying significant forces [in the Kursk region] means they cannot be used to hold the front line in Donetsk, where Russian troops are continuously advancing, moving towards the city of Pokrovsk, and intensifying their operations,” the Politico article states.

On August 14, Verkhovna Rada deputy Maryana Bezuhla, who regularly criticizes the Armed Forces’ command, also wrote about Zaluzhnyi opposing the offensive in the Kursk region. According to her, the current Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi, supported the operation. She also mentioned that “the idea of trying to shift the war to the aggressor’s territory has been around for a long time.”

It should be noted that Zelensky dismissed Zaluzhnyi from the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on February 8, 2024.