Most Ukrainians would oppose sacking of popular army chief Zaluzhnyi – poll

KYIV (Reuters) – The vast majority of Ukrainians would not support the sacking of Valeriy Zaluzhnyi from his position as head of the armed forces, a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) showed on Wednesday.

Despite attempts to demonstrate unity during the war with Russia, signs of friction between Zaluzhnyi and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy have been evident for weeks, spurring domestic media speculation that the army chief could be fired.

KIIS found that only 2% of Ukrainians would actively support Zelenskiy removing Zaluzhnyi from his post, while 72% would view such a move “negatively”. The polsters surveyed 1,200 people living around Ukrainian-controlled territory on Dec. 4-10.

The public’s trust in Zaluzhnyi stood at 92%, the poll found, compared with 77% of people who trust Zelenskiy. Both those levels are very high.

Zaluzhnyi oversaw the major 2023 counteroffensive that failed to retake swathes of Russian-occupied land, but he is very popular with many Ukrainians after beating back Russian forces from swathes of land last year.

Zelenskiy’s trust levels have dipped slightly this year as the mood darkened after the counteroffensive made little headway and optimism over a quick end to the war faded.

Asked at news conference on Tuesday if he wanted to sack Zaluzhnyi, Zelenskiy denied there was any rift between them but said he wanted to see concrete results from the military leadership.

He avoided directly criticising Zaluzhnyi, with whom he said he had a working relationship, but he also did not explicitly extend his full support for the general.

The tensions between the men burst into the open in November after Zaluzhnyi was quoted as saying the war had reached a stalemate, drawing a rebuke from the president’s office.

This week, Zaluzhnyi criticised a decision that was made by Zelenskiy to fire the heads of the regional military draft offices amid a crackdown on corruption this summer. He also said the war had not reached a stalemate.

(Reporting by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Hugh Lawson)