Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, known for his restraint and ability to control emotions, lashed out at the commanders of the Armed Forces. This happened a few weeks before the start of a full-scale invasion of Russia.
Zaluzhny said this in an interview with the latest issue of TIME. By the way, it is the illustration with the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that will decorate the new issue of the newspaper, which will go on sale on October 10.
A rare case when Zaluzhny lost his temper
This episode, which Valery Zaluzhny himself told about, took place in early February, when before Russian invasions were only weeks away. Then Ukraine decided to hold an ambitious military exercise involving thousands of military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Their main maneuvers are to mimic a Russian attack and reveal real gaps in Ukraine's defenses. However, a number of commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, according to Zaluzhny, did not take the exercises seriously enough.
I shouted for an hour. I broke. I explained to them that if they do not cope with this (by conducting exercises as efficiently as possible – Channel 24), the consequences will cost us not only lives, but also our country. Zaluzhny recalled.
How Ukraine was preparing for the Russian invasion
The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine also said that shortly before the war, Ukrainian military leaders :
- relocated and disguised military equipment,
- withdrawn troops and weapons from bases, moving them around the country.
Such maneuvers concerned aircraft, tanks, armored vehicles, as well as anti-aircraft batteries, which were critical for Ukraine to maintain control over its skies.
The smell of war is unmistakable and was already in the air. I was afraid that we would lose the element of surprise. We needed the enemy to think that we were all stationed at our usual bases, watching TV and fasting on Facebook,” Zaluzhny said.
He managed to keep all the maneuvers of the Ukrainian army a secret. We add that on February 24, despite the massive missile attack of the Russian Armed Forces, the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not suffer significant losses in aircraft, because the command knew about the time of the Russian attack and took their aircraft into the air.
