Russia trying to show tensions between Ukraine's leadership, ISW
Russia is trying to show tension between Ukraine's leaders (Photo: president.gov.ua)
Russian officials continue to try to create the appearance of tension between Ukrainian political and military leaders, according to the Insitute for the Study of War (ISW).
The director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, unreasonably claimed that high-ranking officials were discussing replacing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with another high-ranking Ukrainian military or political official.
According to ISW analysts, with such statements, Russian sources are trying to discredit the Ukrainian leadership and weaken Western support for Ukraine.
Rumors of a conflict between Zelenskyy and Zaluzhnyi
As a reminder, some media outlets have recently begun reporting on an alleged conflict between President Volodymyr Zelenskyi and Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi. In particular, this happened after Zaluzhnyi's article for The Economist, in which he said that the fighting in Ukraine was reaching a deadlock.
RBC-Ukraine's sources confirmed that relations between Zaluzhnyi and Zelenskyy have recently deteriorated, but not as much as some Western media have reported.
At the same time, NATO does not believe that the differences in public assessments of the situation at the front between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi are of great importance, as Zaluzhnyi's statements are based on a military perspective, while Zelenskyy's are based on a political one.
NATO is also convinced that Russia is now trying to maximize such differences between the political and military leadership, because if there is a "stalemate" on the front, then, according to Russia, it means that Ukraine is losing and Russia is winning the war.
