Zaluzhnyi made his first statement after the interview exposing Zelensky

Former commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, and now Kyiv’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said during a speech at Chatham House in London that his name has been appearing in the news too often lately.

His remarks were reported by the news agency Interfax-Ukraine.

“These days my name has appeared in the news more often than the weather forecast changes in London,” Zaluzhnyi said.

He also joked about how “creatively” journalists write about him. According to him, it sometimes feels as if there is a special department whose employees wake up every morning thinking: “What does Zaluzhnyi think today—even if he himself doesn’t know it yet?”

On February 18, Zaluzhnyi gave an interview to the Associated Press (AP) that quickly spread in quotations. In particular, he spoke about the reasons for the failure of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive. Zaluzhnyi attributed the setback to the fact that President Volodymyr Zelensky did not allocate the necessary resources, which resulted in troops being dispersed over a vast area and weakened their striking power.

Later, Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleksii Honcharenko said that Zelensky’s office urged Zaluzhnyi to retract his critical remarks about the Ukrainian president. Honcharenko claimed that the former commander-in-chief refused, despite receiving calls from everyone—from ministers to Zelensky’s close circle.