The US and most countries around the world believe that Russia will win quickly when it launches its military campaign in Ukraine on February 24.
Zaluzhnyy, 48, who was born into a military family, was appointed chief of the general staff by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last July.
Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeriy Zaluzhnyy before a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and other officials in Kiev last October.
Zaluzhnyy is considered to represent a generation of progressive Ukrainian officers, who have been forged through the eight-year war in the Donbass region in the east of the country.
Cooperation with NATO has created a group of Ukrainian officers with a more professional combat mindset, wishing to perfect their army according to Western standards, while helping to build more flexible combat methods.
`General Zaluzhnyy is the face of the new generation in the Ukrainian army, from senior officers to junior levels,` said former air force officer Oleksiy Melnyk, a senior official at the Razumkov Center, a think tank with
In September 2021, two months before US President Joe Biden’s administration began warning about the risk of conflict breaking out in Ukraine and sharing intelligence about Russia’s military deployment near the border, Zaluzhnyy
`I’ve been talking about this since I took office, because this is a threat of full-blown conflict,` he said in an interview with Radio Svoboda at the time.
Zaluzhnyy attended the Odesa Military Academy and the National Defense Academy in Kiev.
As fighting increased in Donbass, Zaluzhnyy was sent to the east to command combat units.
To avoid further losses in Debaltseve, then-president Petro Poroshenko had to sign the Minsk 2 peace agreement with terms that were considered unfavorable to Ukraine.
In a February 2020 interview with military news site ArmyInform, Zaluzhnyy revealed that his childhood dream was to become a soldier and that he never wanted to become a high-ranking commander.
`I never thought that one day I would become a general and achieve high ranks,` he shared.
The appointment of Mr. Zaluzhnyy to the highest position in the armed forces is also an important part of efforts to restructure the leadership and modernize Ukraine’s military.
A former US special forces officer, who has witnessed changes in Ukrainian special forces over the years, said in 2020 that Ukrainian commandos were `no different from Western special forces`.
Zaluzhnyy once said that the Ukrainian army is full of young, professional soldiers, ready to become the future generation of leaders.
`These are completely different people, not like us when we were lieutenants. These are people who will completely change the army in the next five years. Almost all of them know foreign languages and are fluent in equipment.`
Zaluzhnyy was appointed chief of the general staff of the armed forces at a time when the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense was undergoing a major reform and the military wanted a clear separation between military operations and policy tasks.
`The president wants to see synergy between the Ministry of Defense and the Ukrainian armed forces,` Sergey Nikiforov, Zelensky’s press secretary, said at the time.
Zaluzhnyy later summarized his role with brief statements.
Since Russia began its military campaign in Ukraine in late February, Zaluzhnyy has refused most interviews and made few public appearances.
Some of these posts are short operational updates, about downing fighter jets or destroying Russian tanks.
`Ukraine’s armed forces are Europe’s shield,` he wrote on March 22.
`The price of freedom is very expensive. Remember it in your mind!`, General Zaluzhnyy wrote 5 days later.
`Ukrainians have forgotten fear. Our goal is to win,` he declared on April 2.
Over the years, Zaluzhnyy has not hidden his efforts to call for more resources to be devoted to the military.
`I want to remind politicians, people in the rear cities who talked about ‘betrayal’ or made ‘assessments’ of the army’s combat environment,` Zaluzhnyy wrote.
Although the Chief of General Staff of the Ukrainian Army always sought to avoid `aura` and did not want to become a celebrity, the success of the Ukrainian army’s resistance efforts on the battlefield made him increasingly famous.
Vu Hoang (According to Politico)