Zaluzhny is once again addressing the big strategic issues of our time. It is very clear to me that the general’s immense popularity stems largely from the fact that he offers people what they have been missing : a strategic vision for waging this war. All of Ukraine’s problems in this existential fight for survival against the Russian empire can, in one way or another, be traced back to failures of strategic planning.
We did not prepare for war, because we had no strategy for resisting the aggressor – we simply assumed that Putin would not attack, since it was supposedly “not in his interest.”
We came up short in mobilizing soldiers at the beginning, because we did not predict a long war of attrition – one that the troops from early 2022 could never sustain for four years.
We lost time developing unmanned systems because we dismissed what has become today’s most effective weapon as nothing more than “wedding drones.”
We lost people abroad because, from the very start of the “great exodus”, we had no strategy for bringing Ukrainian refugees back home.
We drew up plans, signed agreements, yet remained unprepared for the moment when Trump would come to power in the United States and abruptly withhold all U.S. support for months.
When Zaluzhny presents a truly coherent strategic vision, it is only natural that people should see in it the kind of leadership that sustains hope for victory. It is hardly surprising that, in times of hardship, true leadership is shown above all by the army.
Our Forces – despite all their internal problems and inevitable imperfections (for the army is a mirror of society, after all) – have delivered amazing results from the very beginning. Indeed, those results have always exceeded our expectations.
And this is why the people have always stood, and will always stand, with their army. When politicians of the Konchenaya ilk try to undermine the authority of the army, they are only digging their own graves. Because the army is nothing less than the people themselves.
Serhii Marchenko.
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