Ukraine’s former commander in chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, is to become the country’s next ambassador to the UK, a month after he was fired by the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, from his job leading the military.
The decision makes good on Zelenskiy’s promise to keep the popular former general “as part of the team” but it also removes him from Ukraine, where he is seen as the only realistic challenger to the president if there were to be an election.
Zaluzhnyi was dismissed after the failure of the summer counter-offensive against Russian invasion forces, and after a to-and-fro in which the general initially refused to resign at the president’s request before accepting that his position was no longer tenable.
The former commander developed a close personal relationship with his British opposite number, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, during the first two years of the war, although he is not otherwise thought to have any prior connection to the UK.
Radakin was in Kyiv on Thursday, visiting Zelenskiy alongside the UK’s defence secretary, Grant Shapps. But there was no sign of Zaluzhnyi in a video released by the Ukrainian president of their meeting.
Shapps said the UK would supply Ukraine with 10,000 drones for the frontline and increase an investment package from £200m to £325m. Most of the drones are inexpensive first-person-view types used for bombing, but the package also includes £100m for maritime drones of the type used to attack Russian warships in the Black Sea.
“Ukraine’s armed forces are using UK-donated weapons to unprecedented effect, to help lay waste to nearly 30% of Russia’s Black Sea fleet,” Shapps said, drawing an unusually close connection between a donated weapon and its battlefield purpose.
Although Ukraine considers the UK one of its closest allies, the ambassadorship has been vacant for many months. Zelenskiy dismissed the former envoy, Vadym Prystaiko, in July 2023 after he publicly criticised the president.
A row between the two had blown up after Prystaiko went on Sky News to question some of Zelenskiy’s behaviour around that month’s Nato summit, criticising the president for making an apparently sarcastic response to former British defence secretary Ben Wallace.
“On 7 March 2024, the president of Ukraine approved the candidacy of Valerii Zaluzhnyi for the post of ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Ukraine to the United Kingdom,” the Ukrainian foreign ministry said in a statement.
