By VT - Drago Bosnic -November 16, 2023

The former advisor to Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma (1994 to 2005), Oleg Soskin, said on social media on November 13 that the country’s military wants President Volodymyr Zelensky to resign. 

He suggested that the military leadership will no longer take orders from the president that will result in many deaths for no gain, and this aligns with what other experts have said.

In a video, Oleg Soskin recalls that the counteroffensive announced by Zelensky will complete six months in the first week of December without any major progress achieved. Furthermore, the expert pointed out that parliamentarians have already said that Kyiv will try to initiate criminal proceedings against a group of generals.

“Will the generals obey; will they behave like sheep going to the slaughterhouse? I think that in the military environment, everything has already matured, and they want Zelensky, so to speak, to retire,” said the former advisor.

However, this has already been occurring and is well documented. In a revealing article in Time Magazine, correspondent Simon Shuster wrote that “Some front-line commanders,” according to one of Zelensky’s close aides, “have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the office of the President.”

Shuster then revealed how an order was received to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost near Donetsk city, but that the answer came back in the form of a question: “With what? They don’t have the men or the weapons,” said the officer. “Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?”

Ukrainian deputy Oleksiy Goncharenko also warned on November 13 that Zelensky’s office had started a movement against the country’s military bloc, which, according to the Kyiv-based outlet Strana, has been talking about a possible candidacy of the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, Valerii Zaluzhny.

According to the parliamentarian, procedural actions will be carried out in the coming days against high-ranking soldiers of the Ukrainian Army.

The Washington Post published on November 8 that Zaluzhny is extremely popular in the country and could represent a threat to the current Ukrainian president if he begins a political career. According to the newspaper, recent statements by the military showed the impasse for Ukrainian troops, revealing that “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

The counteroffensive began on June 4, and after three months, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that the Ukrainian front was not only stagnant but also a failure. By the beginning of October, Kyiv had lost more than 90,000 Armed Forces personnel, including dead and injured, and according to Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, the Ukrainian Army was unable to achieve any of its objectives.

For the editor-in-chief of New York-based magazine CovertAction, Jeremy Kuzmarov, the cancellation of the elections in Ukraine could lead to a coup d’état in the country. The author of five books explained that Zelensky is unpopular in the country and would lose the elections if they were open and fair.

“Ukrainians have begun to reach their breaking point as a society and cannot survive Zelensky’s misrule much longer and need to negotiate an end to the war with Russia,” Kuzmarov said, adding that the Ukrainian president provoked an un-winnable war with Russia and spent most of his time courting foreign military support instead of being out there on the front lines with his people.

In addition, recent corruption scandals in the Zelensky regime have caused high-ranking officials to resign: four deputy ministers, five regional governors, and advisors. Compounding the allegations of bribery and the purchase of overpriced food amid the conflict, Kyiv officials have adopted a luxurious lifestyle that does not match their salaries.

According to former CIA agent Larry Johnson, the CIA and MI6 in the UK are already preparing for a coup against Zelensky. In his view, Zelensky will either be forced to recall the Presidential election scheduled for next March that he canceled and then be replaced or be replaced anyway in a Maidan-style coup.

Stephen Bryen, who served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and described Larry Johnson as his “friend and colleague,” said that Zelensky was “working in opposition to his own generals,” naming specifically Zaluzhny and Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky, who leads the country’s ground forces.

The claim that Zelensky works in opposition to Zaluzhny and Syrsky would also explain why Oleg Soskin believes that the country’s military wants Zelensky to resign. Ultimately, it was Zelensky’s decisions and choices that have led to the Ukrainian military effectively being destroyed and now putting the country in an even worse bargaining position with Russia. Some in Kyiv and the West think replacing Zelensky can fix many of these issues, but this is not very likely.

Source: InfoBrics

Drago Bosnic

As a Senior Editor at the now-defunct Fort Russ News, I wrote daily about military technology, global economy, and geopolitics, with a special focus on the Middle East, Balkans, Russia, China, United States, Europe, and great power rivalry.