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.
For the most part—though again, translation is difficult—the content of Zaluzhny’s article is uninspiring. As for structure, Zaluzhny presented 10 lessons Ukrainians have learned “over the past extremely difficult years.” Though one might expect more from a former top general, the lessons include items like “[y]ou need to be friends with your neighbors,” “you need to be able to defend yourself from those who don’t want to be friends,” and “[t]he most precious resource in war is people.”
One gets the impression that the point of the piece was not the somewhat clichéd content but the reframing of Zaluzhny as a humble and thoughtful man, plus of course the photos, which were taken by Ukrainian fashion photographer Anna Daki. After over a year of capably but quietly serving as ambassador in London, Zaluzhny has burst back onto the Ukrainian scene with an article and photo shoot that reintroduced him to his compatriots, not as the rough general of Ukraine, but as a relatable man of the common Ukrainian people who, unlike Zelensky, is capable of wearing a tailored suit, rather than military fatigues.
This reentry of Zaluzhny could not have been timed more harmfully for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who, for the first time since the war began, is facing resistance, embarrassment, and protest at home and fierce criticism in Europe.
It is easy to forget now that, before the war, Zelensky was not popular. In 2021, polling showed that his popularity was in rapid decline. According to some polls, the Opposition Platform for Life, a party that Zelensky would ban after the Russian invasion, was ahead of him.
Once the war started, Zelensky recast himself from the anticorruption fighter who would make peace with Russia to the heroic wartime leader. His popularity soared, at one point peaking at 84 percent. Lionized as a Churchillian leader, Zelensky ascended to the Ukrainian pantheon when he spurned a U.S. offer to help him escape, delivering the Hollywood-style quip, “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.” It’s a great line, but Zelensky may not actually have said it. According to The New York Times, “The Biden team considers the story apocryphal… but was impressed by the mythmaking, which is a common tool of war.”
As the conflict dragged on, opportunities for peace were passed up, and Ukrainians suffered at the hands of a mightier neighbor, Zelensky’s popularity began to fall. A Gallup poll taken near the end of 2024 showed a steep drop from 84 percent to 60. Meanwhile, Zaluzhny was establishing himself as a capable military leader and overtaking Zelensky in popularity.
By December 2023, polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed that trust in Zelensky had dropped to 62 percent while 88 percent of Ukrainians trusted Zaluzhny. Internal polling suggested an even bigger gap, pegging the net level of trust in Zelensky at 32 percent versus Zaluzhny’s 70 percent. The Economist suggested that Zelensky “would lose a future election by 30% to 65% to Valery Zaluzhny.” A former senior official in Zelensky’s government claimed that “[p]rivate polling, which I have seen, now puts his support below 10 percent.” Sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko told me, “The polls I have seen gave Zelenskyi 16 percent of electoral support.”
The New York Times reported in February 2024 that “Mr. Zelensky’s ratings had fallen while General Zaluzhny had retained consistently high levels of support. General Zaluzhny’s high standing with the Ukrainian public led to speculation that he could be a prospective challenger to Mr. Zelensky in future elections, prompting some in the country to regard them as political rivals.”
It is at that point that Zelensky fired Zaluzhny and exiled him to London as Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain.
Zaluzhny was neither the first nor the last threat to Zelensky to be eliminated. When Viktor Medvedchuk’s Opposition Platform party showed signs of passing Zelensky in the polls at the start of the war, the Kremlin-friendly politician was sanctioned and arrested, and his party was banned. Later, other serious political rivals, former President Petro Poroshenko and former adviser Oleksiy Arestovych, were also sanctioned.
Ischenko told me that some readings of polls show that Zelensky would probably also lose to Kyrylo Budanov, the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense. Budanov recently told an interviewer that Zelensky tried to fire him nine times but was prevented by pressure from the American embassy in Kiev.
The situation for Zelensky may only get worse—much worse. With the real possibility of the collapse of the Ukrainian armed forces on the horizon, dreams of NATO membership dashed, the prospect of European Union membership receding to a later and later date, and unpopular forced conscription, Zelensky’s near deified status is fading and the president may soon appear to many Ukrainians as a villain.
Zelensky’s image was only tarnished further by his signing a law that terminated the independence of Ukraine’s most important anticorruption agencies and then being forced to back down and sign a law reversing that legislation after protestors filled the streets of Ukraine. It was the first time Zelensky had been called out by Ukrainians and European elites and the first time he had been forced to reverse course on a significant political matter.
But the damage to Zelensky’s reputation had already been done. The anticorruption agencies had been investigating senior officials, members of parliament, top ministers, and people in Zelensky’s inner circle. His move to protect them had the appearance of corruption and authoritarianism. A former senior official in Zelensky’s administration told The Spectator that Ukrainian officials have come to believe that Zelensky is “prolonging the war to hold on to power.” The Spectator also reports that surveys find that “70 per cent of Ukrainians also believe their leaders are using the war to enrich themselves.”
Subscribe Today
Get daily emails in your inbox
But the timing of Zaluzhny’s Vogue Ukraine feature is not just bad because of the trouble that Zelensky is now facing at home. It came out on the heels of reporting that the U.S. sees Zaluzhny as the best potential leader to replace Zelensky in a coup.
On July 18, the veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, who has sustained an uncanny track record for being proved right even when his reporting is at first dismissed, wrote that “Zaluzhnyi is now seen as the most credible successor to Zelensky.” That is not news. But then Hersh dropped his bombshell. “I have been told by knowledgeable officials in Washington that that job could be his within a few months.” Hersh says that “Zelensky is on a short list for exile, if President Donald Trump decides to make the call” and that U.S. officials told him that if Zelensky doesn’t leave voluntarily, “‘He’s going to go by force.’”
Days later, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, in what could be real or could be disinformation, added to the story. They claim to have information that representatives of the U.S. and U.K. held a secret Alpine meeting with the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak, Budanov, and Zaluzhny to discuss “[t]he prospects for replacing V. Zelensky as the head of the Kyiv regime.” At that meeting, the Americans and British allegedly “announced their decision to nominate Zaluzhny for the post of President of Ukraine.”It is in this context that Zaluzhny’s feature in Vogue Ukraine and its rebranding of Zaluzhny broke in Ukrainian culture. Zaluzhny could not have been unaware of the context, raising the questions of why he wrote this article and had that photo shoot published now—and whether Zelensky needs to be very afraid.
