Time to Say Good-Bye, Volodymyr: Ukrainians Sick of War – Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko Supports General Zaluzhny over Zelensky

Wives and mothers protesting in Kiev against the war; screenshot Tagessschau

Ukrainian wives and mothers have taken to protesting for their men to be returned from the front on Kiev’s Maidan Square. Now the media stage is being set for a regime change and possible end of the hopeless proxy war, as President Volodymyr Zelensky fights with his Commander-in-Chief and the Mayor of Kiev backs the rebel General. The Gateway Pundit was one of the only news media covering the near-total failure of the Biden-Obama-backed “Spring offensive” in Ukraine, which cost approximately 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers.

Unusually, Germany’s lead news program “Tagesschau” covered a protest by wives and mothers who object to their sons and husbands being sacrificed for Joe Biden’s FUBAR disaster of a proxy war. One woman held up a sign in English reading: “625 days at war – My Husband is not a prisoner – Soldiers also have rights, not only duties!”

ARD Tagesschau

In an interview with The Economist, the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) Valery Zaluzhny said the war had “reached a stalemate,” and that “there will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough”.

Ukraine’s CINC acknowledged it was an error assuming Russia could be deterred by attrition.  “That was my mistake. Russia has lost at least 150,000 dead. In any other country, such casualties would have stopped the war,” Zaluzhny said.

Gen. Zaluzhny admitted the Ukrainian “Spring Offensive” had failed in its goal to conquer the ethnic Russian regions and reach historically Russian Crimea.

“If you refer to NATO textbooks and our initial calculations, it should have taken us just four months to reach Crimea, engage in combat, withdraw from Crimea, and re-enter and exit the region,” Gen. Zaluzhny told the Economist.

Instead, the Ukrainian army, equipped with billions in Western taxpayer-funded arms, found itself thrown into a “Meat grinder” on casualty-heavy fronts like Rabotyne, fighting inch by inch and hamlet by hamlet, only to find themselves hammered by Russian artillery and drone attacks even when they made their very limited advances.

“First, I thought there was something wrong with our commanders, so I changed some of them. Then I thought maybe our soldiers are not fit for purpose, so I moved soldiers in some brigades,” General Zaluzhny told the Economist.

“It is important to understand that this war cannot be won with the weapons of the past generation and outdated methods,” Zaluzhny said. “They will inevitably lead to delay and, as a consequence, defeat.”

“The biggest risk of an attritional trench war is that it can drag on for years and wear down the Ukrainian state,” Zaluzhny says.

The critical interviews seem to be a sign of a growing rift between Zaluzhny and President Volodymyr Zelensky, who now has stopped communicating with the CINC, Ukrainiska Pravda reports.

According to Ukrainska Pravda, sources claim Zelensky “communicates with some commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, avoiding Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny and preventing him from holding overall command of the army.”

There is an impression that Zelensky has two types of Armed Forces: the ‘good ones’, commanded by (Ground Force Commander Oleksandr) Syrskyi and other favorites, and ‘bad ones’, which are subordinate to Zaluzhny . It is very demotivating for the Commander-in-Chief, and, most crucially, it prevents him from commanding the entire army.”

The Mayor of Kiev, former heavyweight boxer Vitaly Klitschko, has now thrown his weight behind Zaluzhny and against Zelensky, telling Swiss publication 20 Minuten that the General “Told the truth.”

“Some may not want to hear the truth [but] we can’t lie to our people and partners indefinitely,” Klitschko said, saying that Zaluzhny had been “unjustly criticized.”

Klitschko said it would be “inappropriate” to discuss his own presidential ambitions, which is a Yes.

Asked about Zelensky’s plummeting popularity, Klitschko said, “People see [for themselves] who is effective and who is not.”

“People are wondering why we weren’t better prepared for this war, why Zelensky denied until the last moment that it would come… or [how] the Russians could get to Kyiv so quickly,” Klitschko said.  “The president has an important function, and we must support him until the end of the war. But at the end of the war, every politician will answer for his successes and failures,” he added.

Acting Assistant Secretary of State and Ukraine war hawk Victoria Nuland famously discussed whether the USA should install Vitaly Klitschko or Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the next President of Ukraine after the NATO-sponsored Maidan coup in 2014 in a phone call with US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt.

“I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Nuland said in 2014. “I think Yats  (Yatsenyuk) is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and (Oleg) Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.”

Now, apparently, Vitaly Klitschko is lining himself up to be the President of Ukraine after all.

This post was originally published on this site