Ukraine’s Military Faces Major Shake-up

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep!

For your radar: Jack and Robbie will be in Munich later this month with dozens of top world leaders and hundreds of senior national security officials from around the world for the Munich Security Conference.

We’ll be sending out daily SitRep newsletters to round up all the news, scoops, and tidbits we’ll pick up along the way, so stay tuned for that. And if you or a colleague will be in Munich, send us an email or forward this one along.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Ukraine’s top general finds himself on thin ice, Biden greenlights retaliatory strikes against Iran in Iraq and Syria, and the United States moves ahead with selling pricey drones to India.

Change of Course

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is still denying it, the country’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, seems set to be dismissed any day now. CNN reports that the firing could happen as soon as this week.

“The lack of success in the 2023 counter-offensive, the interview by General Zaluzhniy in The Economist in late 2023, and perceptions about his presidential aspirations all appear to have built to a crescendo in the past few days,” tweeted Mick Ryan, a retired Australian major general who recently traveled to Kyiv.

Long-simmering tensions. Disagreements between Zaluzhny and the country’s political leaders occurred even before the war, with Zaluzhny trying to prepare Ukraine for the fight he believed was coming, while Ukrainian leaders, including Zelensky, downplayed the threat of Russia actually launching a full-scale invasion.

And although in 2022 Zaluzhny mastered the military art of trading space for time by temporarily ceding territory in Ukraine’s east, the Ukrainian military got bogged down in the mineral-rich city of Bakhmut in 2023, diverting precious troops and resources away from the critical southern leg of the counteroffensive.

Now, the Washington Post reports that Zaluzhny’s protests that Ukraine can’t reclaim more Russian-occupied territory without a fresh mobilization of troops and more weapons has further strained his relationship with Zelesnky.

“We must acknowledge the significant advantage enjoyed by the enemy in mobilizing human resources and how that compares with the inability of state institutions in Ukraine to improve the manpower levels of our armed forces without the use of unpopular measures,” Zaluzhny wrote in an op-ed published by CNN on Thursday.

Beyond the tactical tensions, there are also personal ones. Experts who traveled to Kyiv said that the friction between the two men was palpable, especially as Zaluzhny’s name was repeatedly bandied about in the press, even making Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2022. “The general also showed political talent that he tried not to advertise,” researcher Konstantin Skorkin wrote for the Carnegie Endowment in December. “He managed to establish contacts with paramilitary and nationalist circles that were distrustful of Zelensky.”

A November interview Zaluzhny gave to the Economist further inflamed tensions, after Zaluzhny publicly acknowledged the war was at a stalemate.

Generational shift. Zelensky’s decision to promote Zaluzhny from a two-star post all the way to the top of Ukraine’s military in 2021 was seen as a major break with Ukraine’s Soviet past, as Foreign Policy previously reported.

Zaluzhny is part of a new generation of thinkers who came up after the fall of the Berlin Wall—he is the first Ukrainian military chief since independence never to have served in the Soviet Red Army—and who had bought into NATO’s “Mission Command”-style tactics that give individual troops greater flexibility to make tactical decisions in the heat of battle without having to ask headquarters first.

Now, there is concern that Ukraine could reverse course on those tactics if Zaluzhny is fired. Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, one of Zaluzhny’s possible replacements, is eight years older than Zaluzhny. He’s a graduate of the Soviet equivalent of West Point and is hated by some of the rank and file of Ukraine’s military, as the Washington Post reported, who see him committed to operations like Bakhmut that focus on holding tactically unimportant territory instead of pushing to cut Russia’s access points out of Crimea. Another name that has been floated is Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s defense intelligence chief, who made headlines this week by downplaying the potential impact of another Trump term on Ukraine. Budanov has limited command experience but has taken credit for major sabotage missions such as Ukrainian attacks on the Kerch Strait bridge in Crimea.

Glimmers of hope. Projections for the year ahead in Ukraine are gloomy, as last year’s counteroffensive failed to reclaim significant ground and U.S. military aid remains in limbo in Congress. It’s not all bad news from Ukraine, though.

“It’s important that we recognize the ways in which actually Ukraine has been having a great deal of success,” said a senior British official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the latest developments in the war.

They pointed to what they described as “genuine lasting strategic change” in the Black Sea, noting that Ukraine has succeeded in establishing control over the western half of the sea, ousting much of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet from around Crimea. They added that Ukraine’s grain exports, which were brought to a near standstill by a Russian blockade that sent food prices soaring in much of the world, are projected to reach 80 percent of pre-invasion levels this year.

Let’s Get Personnel

Chad Bown has joined the State Department as its chief economist, coming from the Peterson Institute for International Economics think tank.

On the Button

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Response incoming. U.S. President Joe Biden has approved a series of strikes on targets in Iraq and Syria, including Iranian personnel and facilities, CBS News reported on Thursday. The expected action is in response to a drone attack on a U.S. military outpost in Jordan that killed three U.S. service members and injured 41 on Sunday, which the Biden administration has attributed to the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella term for a network of Iranian-backed militia groups. U.S. forces across the region have faced a barrage of rocket and drone attacks by Iranian proxies since war between Israel and Hamas began in October.

Drones for New Delhi. The State Department has approved the possible sale of 31 MQ-9B Sky Guardian drones, produced by General Atomics, to India, as part of an arms package estimated to cost almost $4 billion. The proposed deal was first announced during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to Washington last year and underscores the deepening defense ties between the United States and India. Washington has sought to bolster India’s defense capabilities to serve as a counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific.

“The proposed sale will improve India’s capability to meet current and future threats by enabling unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance patrols in sea lanes of operation,” the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement announcing the deal, which will now go to Congress for final approval.

Spies like us. Members of Generation Z are entering the workforce in droves with new expectations about work-life balance that are causing another culture shock for organizations that were barely getting over the millennial influx. The CIA, it seems, is no different, according to a column in the Cipher Brief this week by Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired officer from the Senior Intelligence Service who still has his ear to the ground at Langley.

“They are smarter than ever. They are tech savvy,” he writes of the new Gen Z cohort of operations officers. But that’s not all. “At this rate, according to my peers, one would not be surprised if the young officers unionized, with work stoppages and demands for better working conditions becoming more important than stealing secrets and penetrating terrorist networks.”

Snapshot

Armed supporters of Yemen’s Houthi rebels attend a rally in solidarity with Hamas against Israel in Sanaa, Yemen, on Jan. 29. Mohammed Huwais/AFP via Getty Images

Put on Your Radar

Thursday, Feb. 1: Adm. Samuel Paparo, the Biden administration’s nominee to lead U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, faces a confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Sunday, Feb. 4: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele appears headed for a landslide reelection victory in El Salvador’s presidential and legislative elections.

Wednesday, Feb. 7: Azerbaijan holds a snap presidential election. President Ilham Aliyev is expected to win again after taking full control of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region last year. The country’s two largest opposition groups are boycotting the vote.

Quote of the Week

“We don’t have troops in Yemen.”

—Deputy Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh, who must’ve missed the memo that the United States does, in fact, have troops deployed to Yemen.

This Week’s Most Read

• 3 Options for How Biden Could Respond to Iran by Jack Detsch
• America Is Planning to Withdraw From Syria—and Create a Disaster by Charles Lister
• The Reason China Can’t Stop Its Decline by Howard W. French

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

The court ruling of our era. India’s courts are hearing a case on who the original inventor of the country’s famed butter chicken dish is, as part of a lawsuit between two rival restaurants in New Delhi. The next hearing in this gripping and high-stakes legal saga (we’re only partially kidding) is in May, so stay tuned for more updates later this year.

Tired of skyrocketing rent and home prices? Here’s one option: Be the president of Russia. Vladimir Putin has reportedly built a luxury residence on a massive estate near Russia’s western border with Finland that includes pools, a brewery, and bidets that cost nearly $11,000 apiece. The Russian president officially makes around $140,000 a year, so he must be an absolute ace at budgeting and saving.