The head of the Ukrainian Army, Valeri Zaluzhni, has revealed that the office set up for him in which a hidden microphone was found was the one he planned to use this Monday to hold a meeting. The hidden recording device was found Sunday during a pre-inspection.
“Therefore, it is likely that they were preparing for my meeting,” the general added in statements to the Ukrainian publication RBK. “Anything is possible; the investigation will show what happened,” he said.
The head of the Army explained that the office had previously been used for other meetings, and ruled out that the alleged attempt to record the meeting could be a measure by the Ukrainian General Staff itself.
“I have quite a few places where I work, and this has happened in one of them,” said the general, who added that he had not used the office in question for quite some time.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) reported the opening of an investigation into the discovery in an office set up for use by Zaluzhni of a recording device that had no storage or transmission capacity.
Ukrainian media have been talking for weeks about an alleged confrontation between Zaluzhni and President Volodymyr Zelensky, after the general published in November an evaluation of the progress of the war in which he concluded that the front has stalled after failing to achieve the Ukrainian counteroffensive in expected results.
Zelensky insisted that the front is not stagnant and indirectly rejected Zaluzhni’s conclusions when asked in public about the military high command’s analysis.
This Monday in the same interview with RBK, General Zaluzhni asked to return to the old recruitment system and regretted that the military in charge of it had been dispensed with, whom he described as “professionals.”
Zelensky fired all the heads of Ukraine’s recruiting offices in August after several cases of bribery in exchange for exempting men of military age from going to war were revealed.
Opposition figures such as the mayor of kyiv, Vitali Klichkó, and former president Petro Poroshenko have shown their support for Zaluzhni given his apparent distancing from the head of state.
In a survey by the International Institute of Sociology of kyiv published this Monday, 62% of Ukrainians surveyed say they have confidence in President Zelensky, whose popularity rating has dropped significantly compared to last year.
Meanwhile, 88% of Ukrainians surveyed said they trusted Zaluzhni.
Asked this Tuesday about the possibility of dismissing the head of the Armed Forces, Zelensky affirmed that he has “good working relations” with him and that he is not interested in “personalities”, but he emphasized the need for all senior State officials to offer “results”. “Whatever position you hold, it’s about accountability for day-to-day results,” he said.
“It is not a question of becoming a victim, of sacrificing oneself on the altar; it is an honor to be head of the Army, as it is to be president of Ukraine, I am not tired of being one,” said the head of state in reference to Zaluzhni.