RT by @StevensHelga: Valeriy Zaluzhny.

I remember the summer of 2021 - really a time an epoch away from now.

The excitement from having Zelensky, 'a brand new face' in charge of the nation and a hope of major changes, was long gone.

Zelensky was almost completely absorbed by 'the system'. Lots of shady characters standing behind his back, pulling strings, and whispering things in his ears.

The defense minister is an old grumpy post-Soviet military bureaucrat with an awkwardly incompetent spokesperson and repeatedly failing defense procurement plans.

The defense production reform, along with many other vital reforms, standing still.

Instead, the inception of new bureaucratic monsters filled with shady characters that were mostly engaged in the same bureaucratic ping pong with little to no results seen on the ground.

It's the same old Ukrainian model of 'making two steps forward and then immediately a step back.'

Defense Minister Andriy Taran and top general Ruslan Khomchak hated each other so much that they couldn't stay in the same room and literally waged a legal battle against each other.

Disappointment was growing.

And then, during one of Zelensky's never-ending team reshuffles, suddenly a new name pops up: General Valeriy Zaluzhny.

I remember the 'Woooooooow' cry that rolled through the military and near-military community when Zaluzhny was appointed as the new commander-in-chief.

Not many really knew him beyond the community back then.

A career soldier who went through years of dark decay in the Ukrainian armed forces as a platoon commander then received an extensive military education and gained his stars and his experience in the battlefields of Donbas.

One of 'the new blood' brought up by the war of 2014-15 who miraculously managed to stay in the military and gain the reputation of a 'reasonable commander' to serve under, as many were saying th…

🐦🔗: https://nitter.cz/IAPonomarenko/status/1756080618666930268#m

[2024-02-09 22:20 UTC]