Half an hour before that, Zelensky met with Zaluzhny and thanked him for his work.
And in the evening, the president awarded Zaluzhny the title of Hero of Ukraine.
Zelenskyi appointed Oleksandr Syrskyi .
Disputes between Zelenskyi and the head of the committee seriously intensified in November 2023, but then the resignation did not happen. On January 29, 2024, Zelensky summoned Zaluzhnyi and informed him that he planned to fire him. Then the president never signed the decree, but it happened on February 8.
Before his release, Zaluzhny still had time to publish his program column on CNN, in which he outlined his vision of the war and the plan for changes in the army for the next six months.
An old conflict
Talks about the resignation of Zaluzhny, who has a higher approval rating than the president, have stirred up society in recent months. And Ukrainian and Western commentators wrote about a major crisis of confidence between the military and political leadership of Ukraine.
Zaluzhnyi is a military personnel with over 20 years of military career. In July 2021, Volodymyr Zelenskyy appointed him as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
"It wasn't just a blow below the belt, it was a knockout," Zaluzhny recalled his first emotions from the appointment in an interview with Time.
It was Zaluzhny who commanded the Ukrainian military when Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
And although the Ukrainian authorities were often criticized for the fact that the country did not sufficiently prepare for war, and perhaps that is why the Russians so quickly managed to reach Kyiv and occupy the south-east of Ukraine, experts and those in power admit that in many ways the fact that the state stayed in the first months are the merit of Zaluzhnyi.
Like, it was he who took care of the secret redeployment of Ukrainian aviation and air defense equipment, not allowing them to be destroyed. He also secretly prepared a plan to repel aggression.
The New Yorker magazine claims that Zaluzhny hid military preparations even from Volodymyr Zelenskyi and Kyiv's American partners.
He did not say anything to Zelenskyi, allegedly out of fear that he, not believing in the possibility of an invasion, would ask him to curtail his preparations. The Americans - because they could tell Zelensky and others about these preparations.
During almost two years of full-scale war with Russia, Zaluzhny became popular both in Ukrainian society and in the West.
He was highly appreciated by his Western colleagues, and photo collages and memes with Zaluzhny were readily posted on the network, giving him credit for the first visible victories of Ukraine - the defeat of the Russians near Kiev, the sinking of the Russian cruiser "Moskva", the liberation of Kherson and Kharkiv region in the fall of 2022.
Against this background, conversations began about Zaluzhnyi's prospects as a politician and likely competitor of President Volodymyr Zelenskyi.
Over the past year, Ukraine's successes at the front practically disappeared - the expected counteroffensive, during which the Ukrainian authorities promised to liberate, if not Crimea, then the entire Kherson region and Zaporizhzhia region, did not yield results.
Was resignation inevitable?
In November 2023, an article and interview by Zaluzhny in the British edition of The Economist was published, which caused a storm and set in motion the process that eventually led to his dismissal.
In the address, Zaluzhny admitted for the first time that the Ukrainian offensive ended without the expected success, and the calculation that heavy losses would exhaust the Russians was wrong from the beginning.
He shared his vision of what the country should do in terms of technology, what mistakes to take into account and what exactly is needed from Western partners.
The fate of the war, according to Zaluzhny, depends on the position and supplies of the West, but much, as can be read between the lines, also depends on the political leadership of Ukraine.
Then immediately there were rumors about the possible resignation of Zaluzhnyi and his conflict with President Zelensky, who had a different view on the course of the war.
The president's team denied this information in every possible way, but the conflict was deepening. Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that opinion polls continued to record a drop in the president's rating and stable support for Zaluzhnyi.
The last visible confrontation between Zelenskyi and Zaluzhnyi was the draft law on strengthening mobilization. The president did not want to take responsibility for these decisions and tried to shift it to the military leadership.
In the end, the law was not adopted and it was brought back to the parliament for consideration, and it is not known when it will be adopted.
The decision of the president could be influenced by the situation with the possible shooting down of the Russian Il-76 plane near Belgorod by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to the Russians, Ukrainian prisoners could be there. The General Staff bluntly admitted that the planes could have been shot down by the Armed Forces. Russia has not provided evidence that the prisoners were on board.
Against the background of rumors about the imminent dismissal, on February 1, the American edition of CNN published a column by the chief of staff, in which he outlined his vision of war and changes in the military, as well as criticized the state's inability to ensure the mobilization and operation of the defense industry.
Earlier, political scientists pointed out that the dismissal of Zaluzhnyi would be a big political mistake by Zelenskyi and he would create a strong political competitor with his own hands.
"It would be the most fatal mistake of the president - an attempt to release Zaluzhny. This is the worst thing you can do. This will automatically make him Zelensky's main competitor," political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko insisted in the fall of 2023.
According to a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted in late November-early December 2023, Ukrainians trusted the Armed Forces of Ukraine the most (96%), and this trust did not change during another year of war.
President Volodymyr Zelensky is still trusted by the majority of Ukrainians, but it has become much less - if in December 2022, 84% trusted the head of state, then at the end of 2023 - already 62%.
A separate question that sociologists asked Ukrainians in 2023 was trust in Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny. In the second year of the war, 88% of Ukrainians trusted him. At the same time, 59% trust him and President Zelensky.
How will Ukrainian society perceive the resignation of the popular chairman, "Zaluzhny's father"? The already mentioned December poll of the KMIS showed that 72% of Ukrainians do not support replacing Zaluzhny with another general (2% support).
