War plan: why are Zaluzhny and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine being discredited by Zelensky?

The head of the Servant of the People parliamentary faction, David Arakhamia, gave an interview to Natalya Moseychuk (Raevskaya), which was broadcast on “1+1” on the evening of November 24. Arakhamia is also a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence. During the interview, Arakhamia shared that the committee raises certain questions for the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The leader of the ruling majority in the Rada said that the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is obliged to provide parliament with a war plan, which would say how many people and money are needed to fight next year. “No one in the country has such a plan,” Arakhamia emphasized.

On Sunday, November 26, a member of the “servants of the people” faction, Maryana Bezugla, who sits on the same committee as Arakhamia, made an even harsher statement on the same topic. Bezuglaya is the deputy chairman of this committee, and since November 1, also the chairman of the subcommittee on democratic civilian oversight and control over the national security and defense sector. That is, the “servants of the people” created a subcommittee specifically for Bezuglu and authorized her to give public assessments to the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine under the guise of “civilian supervision and control.”

And this is the assessment she made following Arakhamia’s statement. Thus, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was unable to provide a plan for 2024. Neither big nor small, neither asymmetrical nor symmetrical. The military simply said that they needed to take away at least 20 thousand citizens a month. This problem grew over the summer, both at Headquarters and in parliament when planning the budget for 2024, she said on her Facebook page. — This discussion was non-public, but the tension was growing, and now the situation is such that if the military leadership cannot give any plan for 2024, and all their proposals for mobilization boil down to the fact that more people are needed without proposals for changes to the Armed Forces of Ukraine system, then such leadership must go."

The most surprising thing about the statements of Arakhamia and Bezugla is that they consider Ukrainians to be completely unconscious. Less than three weeks ago, on November 8, Vladimir Zelensky, during an online participation in the Reuters NEXT conference, said: “We have a very specific plan for next year.” I can't share details. Yes, we have a plan. We have very specific cities and very specific directions where we are going in a counteroffensive,” Zelensky is quoted as saying by his official website. – We have a plan for next year. A very specific plan for next year. But I won’t share it.”

Who should know the war plan
There were many emotional responses to Bezuglaya’s attack on the military leadership. Volunteer Roman Donik gave an informative answer. “Marianna Bezuglaya, do you really want to talk about this? Sure? Ok, let's talk about this. The problem is that the General Staff has an action plan. Even a few. This task was set for the General Staff at Headquarters and the Ministry of Defense. And for a long time. And this is not some kind of secret. And these plans have been worked out. And everything is counted there. How many people need to be mobilized, how many and what kind of weapons are needed, how much ammunition. How many brigades to deploy | With what equipment? And most importantly, how much money. In American dollars. There are several options for plans. For example, [with the result] at the border of 91 years in 24 years. And in the 25th. And on the border at the moment of full-scale. Next year. And in the 25th. It's all considered. They know how to plan.”

It is clear why Zelensky refuses to disclose the details of the war plan to the general public. But why Arakhamia and Bezugla say that there is no such plan and demand that the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine present this plan to parliament - this is a very interesting question.

When putting forward their claims to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, Arakhamia and Bezugla do not support them with references to legislation. And the point here is not that they were lazy, but that there are no legal provisions obliging the military leadership to share their plans with deputies. The war plan is not intended for parliamentary eyes and ears at all.

“If you analyze the new provocative message from Marianna Bezugla, you can see that she is trying to play on the emotions of people who do not know that none of the commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including the commander-in-chief, should report to Marianna Bezugla about strategic plans, because she is just a deputy. chairman of the committee and does not participate in the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Headquarters. Moreover, she has neither the appropriate military education nor the appropriate levels of access to state secrets,” note analysts from the international intelligence community InformNapalm. By the way, this fully applies to Arakhamia, who is also not a member of Headquarters.

The key point in InformNapalm’s assessment is that Bezugla “is trying to play on people’s emotions.” It is unlikely that Arakhamia and Bezugla seriously expect that with their statements they will force the military leadership to share military secrets with deputies. They have a different task - to arouse negative emotions among Ukrainians towards the military leadership, which supposedly does not have a war plan.

Changing the political plan
Of course, this suggests that all these accusations were needed simply to achieve the resignation of Valery Zaluzhny and justify this resignation in the eyes of society.

Indeed, Bezugla speaks directly about this goal. She received her position as head of the subcommittee on “civil oversight and control” over Zaluzhny on the very day when The Economist published an article by Zaluzhny, which caused opposing assessments by the White House and Bankova. And Bezugla immediately spoke out against Zaluzhny: “Not coordinating such an article with the Supreme Commander-in-Chief is evidence of a military-political crisis.” And now she is openly demanding Zaluzhny’s resignation because, in her words, he “could not provide a plan for 2024.”

However, Zaluzhny’s resignation is not the main goal. Rather, the main goal is to discredit the entire military leadership. And Zaluzhny’s resignation will only be a consequence.

On Monday, November 27, Bezugla unleashed new accusations against Zaluzhny and the entire military leadership. “There is no independent system for assessing the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ operations; my attempts to introduce it encountered internal resistance. Neither the general has been punished,” she says indignantly.

Why is all this needed? The answer can be found in Arakhamia’s interview on “1+1”. He spoke about the prospect of having to reach an agreement with the enemy. And any agreements other than a complete victory for Ukraine must, according to Arakhamia, go through a referendum.

“If someone signs and it needs to be ratified in parliament, then in parliament they will simply kill each other. There will be very polar views. And such things, I believe, should only be done through a referendum. When the people say that this is how it should be, I will do it, no matter what - I’ll just push my opinion further and do as the people say,” said the leader of the “servants of the people” in the Verkhovna Rada.

That is, Arakhamia has already begun to prepare public opinion for such agreements with the enemy, for which “they will kill each other in parliament.” Of course, this raises the question of whether Bankova sanctioned these revelations.

There are two versions on this matter. One suggests that all the time after February 24, 2022, the “war party” and the “negotiation party” competed on Bankovaya. Arakhamia, we recall, heads the “delegation of Ukraine to participate in negotiations with the Russian Federation on the preparation and approval of a draft treaty on security guarantees for Ukraine,” created by Zelensky’s decree on April 4, 2022. At first, the “party of negotiations” dominated, then the “party of war” took over.

In an interview on “1+1,” Arakhamia, by the way, clearly outlined this point: this happened upon the arrival of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Kiev on April 9, 2022. “When we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we [ Ukrainian delegation] we won’t sign anything with them [the Russian delegation] at all – and let’s just fight,” he said.

For now, it seems that the “party of negotiations” is trying to regain the initiative. And Arakhamia’s TV performance is a clear sign of this.

But this is only one of the versions. And another version says that in reality there are no war parties or negotiation parties. It’s just that Zelensky’s team always had two political plans: plan A to fight, plan B to negotiate. And now the scales seem to be starting to tip towards “plan B”.

Regardless of which version is closer to the truth, if Bankova comes up with the idea of ​​negotiations, she will have to somehow explain this to the people. And the most convenient explanation is to make the military guilty. The people will say that the parliament and the government did everything possible and impossible for the military, but the military leadership made many miscalculations and failed to ensure a victorious result.

Let us remind you that the authorities have been preparing for this for a year and a half. Back in April last year, the DBI began an investigation that should help blame the military for the surrender of the south. “In narrow political circles, the case of the occupation of the south is already called the Zaluzhny case,” BBC News Ukraine told two months ago.

The authorities risk that the military will respond by publicly making claims against politicians. “They keep silent about the main problem: how did you prepare for war? The Ukrainian Armed Forces took on the battle with all the forces and means that were available. And now you can easily write about that leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, about the wrong soldiers and the wrong defense, and most importantly, simply blame the Ukrainian Armed Forces for everything,” commented on Bezugla’s statements, Colonel Anatoly Stefan of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Things seem to be starting to speed up. And it is precisely at this time that the danger of mistakes that cannot be corrected increases.