Why Zelensky Should Fear His Own Former General

The former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces penned an article and posed for Vogue Ukraine in late July. Though the article appeared in the magazine’s 2025 Leaders edition, Valery Zaluzhny nowhere declared an intention to run for Ukraine’s leadership, nor has he declared an intention to run at any other time. But, perhaps, he did not need to.

The article was an apparent rebranding effort. Appearing in a tailored suit instead of the battle fatigues Ukrainians are used to seeing him in, Zaluzhny humanized himself. He discussed his childhood and never mentioned his rise through the ranks nor his battlefield strategy in the war with Russia. Rather than citing military strategists or military historians, Zaluzhny cited Vasyl Alexandrovich Sukhomlynsky, a Ukrainian intellectual and educator who stressed beauty and nature, the preciousness of human life, and the sanctity of bringing joy to others. Zaluzhny set his happy childhood against the backdrop of Sukhomlynsky’s teaching that “the years of childhood are, first of all, the education of the heart.” Sukhomlynsky, he explained, taught that childhood is when “moral qualities, emotional intelligence, and the ability to empathize develop.”

These are very different words and a very different tone than Ukrainians are used to hearing from their heroic military commander. Zaluzhny carefully cast himself as a man of the people. “I was born in 1973 in an ordinary Ukrainian city, in an ordinary Ukrainian family,” he wrote. He grew up in a home where “[e]veryone in our family spoke Ukrainian” and in a village where “many Ukrainian songs were sung.” He grew up in his “grandfather's modest house,” where there was not “a single Russian book.” In his childhood, Russian was the language of the bullies in the city; in his adulthood, Russia is “the most brutal enemy since fascism.”

Zaluzhny placed great emphasis on “the people who are united in the state of Ukraine.” Though the translation is, at times, difficult, he seems even to have made a concession to Ukraine’s ethnic Russians, holding up the hope of a future that is “not a monopolar totalitarian one” and “at least with a chance for democratic values.” This tone and these apparent concessions depart from the monoculturist language of Ukrainian governments since the 2014 coup that have attempted to erase any whiff of Russian language and culture.