Ukraine’s Zelenskyy removes top general in major military shakeup

Zelenskyy said he thanked Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi for his two years of service as commander-in-chief and discussed possible replacements for the top military job.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Ukraine’s top general on Thursday and told him it’s time for someone new to lead the army in what amounts to a major shake-up of Ukraine’s war strategy.

In a post on X, Zelenskyy said he thanked Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi for his two years of service as commander-in-chief and discussed possible replacements for the top military job. “The time for such a renewal is now,” Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy says he has appointed Сol. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, to lead the army. Syrskyi, 58, has since 2013 been involved in the Ukrainian army’s effort to adopt NATO standards.

Zaluzhnyi, in a Telegram message, did not announce he had stepped down but said he accepted that “everyone must change and adapt to new realities” and agreed that there is a “need to change approaches and strategy” in the war.

The statement followed days of speculation spurred by local media reports that Zelenskyy would sack Zaluzhnyi, a move that would amount to the most serious shakeup of the top military brass since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces claimed to have shot down a Russian attack helicopter in eastern Ukraine near the city of Avdiivka, where soldiers are fighting from street to street as Russia’s army steps up its four-month campaign to surround Kyiv’s defending troops.

Ukrainian soldiers used a portable anti-aircraft missile to take down the Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopter, one of the Russian air force’s deadliest weapons, according to Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the commander of Ukrainian units fighting on the southeastern front line.

The roughly 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) line of contact has shifted little during recent months of wintry weather. But as the war in Ukraine nears its two-year anniversary, Avdiivka has become “a primary focus” of Moscow’s forces, the U.K. Defense Ministry said in an assessment Thursday.