stay with us, against the background of rumors about the possible resignation of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of ukraine, valery zaluzhny published an article on the cnn website. we analyze what is written and analyze how the events inside the country are seen in the west. this is bbc ukraine, i'm olga palomaryuk. from warm words to disagreements between the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of ukraine and the president. at a time when general zaluzhnyi's vision of the war is being actively discussed in the west, president zelenskyi's entourage is looking for his replacement. the past week was enough for ukraine. emotional and

made many nervous. on monday , rumors began to spread about the possible resignation of the head of the armed forces of ukraine. later, this news was denied, although neither volodymyr zelenskyi nor valery zaluzhnyi himself commented on the situation. the first to break the silence was the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of ukraine. valery zaluzhnyi published a column on the cnn website on thursday. in it, he talked about his vision of ukraine's war with russia at its current stage, the design of the war. it is the title of the article that has changed, about which he writes in the title , mainly about how the character changes war, that a unique strategy and logic is needed to win, zaluzhnei also mentions the issue of mobilization, and that russia has a significant advantage in mobilization resources, also emphasizes the need for ukraine to use drones and other modern technological systems. a column about...

the war and how to win it for ukraine, my colleagues, bbc correspondents, after carefully reading the material, came to the conclusion that this text by valery zaluzhny is definitely not a farewell, even more, it is a very specific plan of what and how he suggests doing with by war it is clear that golovko has a plan, he is ready to implement it. svyatoslav khomenko analyzes what valery zaluzhnyi wrote, and what can be read between the lines. before ours. i recently reviewed the materials of the western press on this matter and i can say that the western media actually interpreted this column in different ways, each media saw something different in it. cnn columnist andrew kerry, for example, draws attention to the fact that zaluzhnyi's text does not mention either president zelenskyi personally or the relationship between president zelenskyi and commander-in-chief zaluzhnyi. however, this kerry columnist continues, this essay is important to others. it, as he writes, contains

valery zaluzhnyi's first comments on ukraine's political difficulties, it is primarily about the need to strengthen mobilization, as well as difficulties beyond it, and here i think that this diagnosis of zaluzhnyi is meant that international sanctions against russia have not worked as they should. on the other hand, the columnists of the polish election newspaper drew attention to the fact that in his text zaluzhnyi particularly emphasized the role of drones. in his opinion, the expansion of the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in these wars gives ukraine the opportunity to avoid drawing this war into a positional confrontation, which is harmful for ukraine and actually beneficial for russia. overall, it seems to me that the main conclusion of this essay is that he has a plan for this war. now it is possible to discuss whether this plan is good or bad, whether it can be implemented or not, but it exists and... if valery

zaluzhny is dismissed now, it will surely mean that the president is not satisfied with this particular plan, and this will automatically ask the following question: in this case, what plan for the war does the president himself have, but that is a completely different question, after all, valery zaluzhnyi, as of now, when we are talking to you, continues to be in the position of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the very discussion of that , which will be after his hypothetical resignation, seems to me not entirely correct. and one more thing: many observers are now talking about the fact that after the hypothetical resignation, zaluzhny will automatically enter politics and become the highest-rated politician in ukraine. i specifically read four times, and i did not find there anything similar to any essays of the political platform of the future politician valery zaluzhny. this is absolutely some kind of column of a person who lives by war, who actually goes through these for the first time... when he talks

only about the war, now he says: well, the state machine of ukraine cannot implement this mobilization plan, which must be implemented for that we... fought normally, and of course, and of course, he says, he makes a diagnosis that in general the international situation around ukraine around possible and future aid to ukraine, it is getting worse and it will, it can get worse, that is, he is not in some spherical vacuum where ukraine, and therefore everyone should help it, he says that russia can provoke new crises, such as now , for example, in the middle east, and this does not bode well for ukraine. if nothing good, but, and again, this is what is said in the cnn analysis of this column, the future of ukraine is largely in its hands, and it must work out a new system, in fact, of waging war, he is even there at the end of this column says that these are the main

parameters, and it can be done in 5 months, there even sounds like such a specific time period of 5 months, that was the analysis of svyatoslav khumenko, read the article of my colleague on our website. bbc.ua has the headline game zelensky and zaluzhny, the general has made his move. i highly recommend reading it. what does the western press write about? how does the west see the situation in ukraine? and can the confrontation between the president and the commander-in-chief affect the attitude of western partners towards ukraine? my colleagues collected the most important things. zelensky's replacement of the military command, which was supposed to be an update, risks receiving a negative reaction. with such a title... an article from the american edition of the washington post is known. in the article, the publication refers to an unnamed ukrainian official who says that the replacement of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of ukraine zaluzhny, according to zelenskyi, was supposed to bring renewal to the country, where society has been greatly depleted by the war and foreign aid has slowed down. however, due to the rapid

negative reaction among the military, officials' fears and uncertainty in the west suggest that removing a popular general could backfire. consequences and will allow moscow to take advantage of the instability, the article says. well, besides that, it can deal a blow to the morale of the front-line troops, especially due to the lack of a public explanation for the dismissal of the head of the armed forces. another, american edition of the new york times published an article with the title " ukraine's last challenge." aggravation of tension among senior managers. it begins with the words yet absorbed speculation that zelensky would fire his chief military commander. the ukrainian capital, as the article says, a dangerous moment of the war. journalists of the publication note that while ukraine is fighting against russia's brutal offensive and is waiting for the necessary financial assistance from western allies, the country's government is dealing, according to the journalists, with a festering problem, namely

, unrest in the highest political circles around the fate of the country's leading military leader. the publication believes that any attempts to release a popular general for purely political reasons. and not because of military needs, will negatively affect the support of zelenskyi himself. the british edition of the economist was also not impressed and wrote an article with the title "enmity between the president of ukraine and the commander-in-chief of the kypytsi army." will valery zaluzhnyi be released? according to journalists of the publication, the fact that zaluzhnyi's resignation has not yet been announced does not mean that he will not be fired, perhaps a replacement has not yet been found. however , the journalists add that... the city of the industrious can occupy syrskyi or budanov. the publication emphasizes that there were other cases in history when the leaders of countries changed military commanders during the war. journalists indicated that there were misunderstandings between zaluzhny and zelenskyi regarding mobilization and military strategy. and the article ends with the fact that the removal of such

a popular person among the soldiers and the public carries political and military risks, and emphasizes the dilemma: if zelensky leaves the meritorious person in... the position, he will look weak, and if he dismisses him, it will harm confidence in the country's leadership. maria zolkina, a researcher at the london school of economics , is in touch with us. maria, congratulations, we see that western publications are warning, yes, the confrontation between zaluzhny and zelensky can have negative consequences. to what extent does the current situation harm the interests of ukraine? congratulations, this story is certainly ... damaging from the very first indications that there is some tension between the president and the commander-in-chief, and in the end everything resulted in the current situation, where there is no voluntary resignation, and there is no dismissal, but with the details of this situation have become known, are already being discussed in the international arena, and this is

definitely harmful, because today there is an understanding that the motivation for this resignation was or will be. it is political in the first place, and its emphasis on political differences, on the impossibility of working together, is definitely harmful and will be associated with the onset of a certain political and institutional crisis in ukraine in the eyes of our western partners, against the background of , that we have turbulence in the united states on the issue support for ukraine, against the background of the european union's unwillingness to take on full-fledged leadership in these conditions in supporting ukraine's arsenal, in matters of weapons, in matters of financial aid, this will only add arguments to those who believe that... aid to ukraine should be reduced, that the aid is used inefficiently, that

technocratic decisions are not made with this efficiency, productivity, as they should be, so it definitely harms the interests of ukraine, and politically, i would say that i agree with the assessments from the british press that volodymyr zelenskyi found himself in a political impasse of his own, but does the president's office realize that the resignation. general zaluzhnyi will definitely not add to the trust rating or to the popularity rating of the president himself, well, the question is open, maybe they don't realize this. yes, maria, you talked about western partners, how can they react if the authorities do replace the commander-in-chief, what are the options for the development of events in your opinion? first, there will be an attitude towards this resignation first of all, indeed, as a political, secondly,... there will be questions about who will actually be an alternative to general zaluzhny,

since not only in ukraine are the main candidates being discussed, who, according to signals , refused and did not agree, this is primarily general budanov and syrskyi, but who will replace them and whether this person will be responsible for the level of trust on the part of the partners according to the level of his professional skills in the position to which volodymyr zelenskyi... may appoint him, and from the point of view of our western partners, the key is the readiness of a person in the position of commander-in-chief to plan operations and to plan the resources needed for this operation, that is actually the column of general zaluzhny, the one that was for cnn, it really is a manifesto of further actions, with very clear outlines of how exactly ukraine should get out of... this stalemate, no from the impasse, but from the stalemate situation, which

, unfortunately, is being created now due to the lack of resources in ukraine on the one hand, and russia's unwillingness to go on a major offensive on the other hand, and in this, in this plan announced by general zaluzhny, there is really no practically nothing that military people among, in particular, colleagues from the general. in the west, one could criticize, there is an awareness of the impossibility of defeating the russian army in numbers, there is an awareness of the need for competition at the level of technology, the robotization of the very process of any counter- offensive and offensive operations, and the most important thing is that in the current conditions, ukraine should focus precisely on the destruction of all, maria , thanks for the conversation, maria zolkina, researcher at the london school of economics. on our air. it is not about what the column of zaluzhnogo in snn says about his

strategy, what is the difference in approaches between them and by president zelensky, professor of international security at the university of birmingham, stefan wolff, told the bbc. in his latest essay, zaluzhny writes that advanced technologies, especially unmanned vehicles, are now playing a leading role. ukraine very successfully uses drones both in the sky and... at sea, and zaluzhnyi strives to better integrate this into ukraine's military doctrine. this will require better funding, more flexibility and better training. his ratings are higher than even zelensky's. more than 80% trust zuluzhno. sub-70 is also not bad for zelenskyi. but there is a difference between their approaches. and this, to some extent , led to reports of alleged disagreements between them. this is not only about personal rivalry, it is important to... realize, this is about the difference in the vision of the general strategic direction

of this war, in my opinion, the meritorious to a greater extent a realist, better understands what is possible on the battlefield, while zelensky makes more global statements about the return of all ukrainian territories. well, that's all for today, see you on monday. greetings friends. this is the verdict program, we are working live, my name is serhii rudenko, today in the program: the resignation of an employee in the ukrainian and western media, media coverage of personnel rotations, why the president's office is losing information wars. the eu sends a signal, financial assistance of 50 billion euros, as the beginning

of changes on ukraine's accession to the european union, what can stand in the way? pressure and discredit. relations between the authorities and journalists are getting worse, are there problems with freedom of speech in ukraine? we work live on the tv channel, as well on our youtube and facebook platforms , for those who are currently watching us on social media, please like this video, subscribe to our pages, and most importantly, take our survey, today we ask you if there are problems with freedom of speech in ukraine, yes, no, please vote in... youtube, either yes or no, write your comment under this video if you have your own opinion. if you 're watching us on tv, please call if you see any free speech issues, 0800 211 381, no, 0800 211 382, all calls to these numbers are free. i want to introduce the guests

of today's studio, today i have journalists as guests, and they are my colleagues bohdan. butkevich, tv and radio host. bohdan, i congratulate you, i am glad to see you. i congratulate you, mr. serhiy, your viewers. tatyana vysutska, our correspondent in european structures. mrs. tatyana, good evening. greetings, serhiy, good evening. thank you for participating in the program. oleksiy mustafin, historian, publicist, tv producer. mr. oleksiy, i congratulate you and thank you for being with us today. good evening. well, since we colleagues are asking our viewers if there is? problems with freedom of speech in ukraine, i will ask you in order for our tv viewers to understand what the journalists themselves actually think about freedom of speech and what, in what situation we work with you, bogdan, please, i think that they definitely exist for the simple reason that we have them now, well, on the one hand, there are those that are in principle

conditioned by the war, although again , unfortunately, the current government has not built any normal strategic communications and normal military censorship , which should definitely be there, instead, we have an absolute mess in information policy, that is, when it is necessary, unfortunately, the ukrainian state is silent or cannot properly respond to challenges, the last case of the zl-76 being shot down is a textbook example , on the other hand, the authorities continue to hold on to the absolutely bastardized format of the unified telethon, which is already frankly harmful, it is not even just a question of freedom of speech, or, for example, that there are simply no new ones on the telethon... as such, because everything is recorded there, like on russian television, in advance, so that, god forbid, someone does not say something on the live broadcast, this is simply a question of the lack of normal informing of society about what is happening to him in general, and this is happening at the expense of the state, this is unacceptable, and of course, one of the most unpleasant things in terms of freedom of speech is the direct pressure of the authorities through their structures on objectionable journalists, and of course the way they

treat president zelensky personally own communication with the ukrainian media, i will remind you that volodymyr. as well as, in principle , his entire entourage hardly communicates with the ukrainian media, instead they communicate only with western journalists, and of course , in my opinion, this is absolutely unacceptable, so yes, there are huge problems with freedom of speech. thank you, bohdan, oleksiy, do you think there is a problem with freedom of speech in ukraine now? well, i think that people who watch espresso, and we don't have another audience at the moment, well understand that there are problems with freedom of speech in ukraine, they take it into account. that, how do they watch espress, because the issue of not allowing channels is actually limiting their broadcasting, which is already, well, that is, not not not not not a week, not a month, but years have already passed , how do these problems exist, and what actually, you know, yes , talk, talk, you

don't disturb us, nobody even says a word about, er... what is happening, well, in this particular situation, it shows that we have a problem with freedom of speech, on the other hand, yes , certainly affected by war, it is not a natural environment for zmi, although zmi have to perform their function in any conditions, but on the other hand, even before the direct invasion of russia, we know how the current government treated the media. she started by saying that they don't need journalists, and now i see that more bets are placed on telegram channels, if... talk about influencing the audience, well, i don't think so, that is, i think that people's minds are enough , who are engaged in a single marathon, understand that this, this, this phenomenon

can no longer influence the audience and define it, so to speak, positions and opinions , few people receive information through a single marathon, and if so, then it is no longer the problem is that this is no longer a media phenomenon, well, the question here is whether telegram channels... can cover the large audience that is usually covered by television, for example, in ukraine, this is the first, second, of course, you mentioned the tv channel spresso, we are the second year, well, we have been outside t2 for two years, that is , we were thrown out of there as the fifth channel and the direct channel, for some reason we were included in petro poroshenko's pool, and they think that we are poroshenko people, dust workers, and we are simply they took it and threw it away, no one even... understood who the owner was, or whether anyone was related to to this channel, does anyone not have one, well, they just threw it away and that's it. tatyana, do you think there are problems with freedom of

speech in ukraine? well, personally, i have been working abroad for the last few years, and even more so with expresso, where there is no censorship and restrictions, so i do not see any problems for myself, but i see in ukraine a distortion, one might say, of the information... space, when, in fact , real journalism moves somewhere to the side, absolutely non-journalistic work goes ahead, it is a big marathon, which almost no one watches anymore, and that's why if i b said that i am getting more and more happy that every day more and more people tell me that they saw me on espresso, that is, people are starting to look for options, people stop watching the marathon and switch to independent zmi, and that's good, and that... it's good that we are being watched, colleagues, i would like to talk to you about this whole story with the resignation of zaluzhnyi, forgive me, perhaps this topic has already been fully, let's say, sounded

in different configurations on different platforms, including international ones media, but still, this story is her demonstrative, because we have seen informational for five days. attack on zaluzhnyi, but this information attack was organized in such a way that bloggers and journalists were the culprits as a result of this information attack , who probably knew that zaluzhnyi was meeting with zelenskyi on monday and that it had already been decided there that zaluzhnyi would resign from the position of commander-in-chief of the armed forces forces of ukraine, or that they are simply pushing him to leave. eh, could the situation have developed in any other way, given that the resignation, even if it postponed in time the head of the armed forces

of ukraine, this is such an irritating issue for ukrainian society, and no one in the president's team, apparently, can calculate what consequences this resignation can actually lead to and what result this will be, eh? oleksiy, you, as a person who knows information and political technologies, what do you say about what game the president's office has been playing for the past five days, because literally an hour ago the supreme commander's bet ended, as it were there, too, something had to be decided, and here there is information that zaluzhnyi reported there on the supreme commander-in-chief's position, issues. there are none, but there are still questions, you know, to say which game is being played, the current situation

can be defined by the term tsuk, that is , any situation has a loss, on the one hand, it is obvious that there are already disagreements between zelenskyi and zaluzhnyi. .. unconcealed, and knowing the manner of the president, not very people at all, who, mr. oleksiy, very bad, i apologize, bad, bad connection, sir oleksia, we will redial , we will redial you now, because we have problems on the air with the sound, bohdan, come on, let's you start, while oleksia, we will redial, you, how do you evaluate this whole story as witnesses. and the participants of which we actually became, well , look, in this story for a very long time, it has been going on for a very long time, it has been going on since 2000, since the summer

of june 2022, even since april, these are... not my words, these are journalists ukrainian pravda even wrote in an article that when mr. yermak essentially returned to management, i don’t know the country, but volodymyr zelenskyi for sure, the first thing he did was to, let’s say, put him on the head, the question is that, let’s say, everyone perfectly understands that zelensky usually ascribes some political ambitions to zaluzhd, which in reality did not exist, but there are simply concepts, of course understandable ratings , in which the rating of confidence in the underline not a political rating, these are different things, trust is not a political rating, but who cares, the political rating of trust in zaluzhny is consistently higher than that of zelensky, plus don't forget that the president's office constantly measures and political ratings, yes, political ratings, as far as i know, in the last month it has already happened that even in the first, roughly speaking, conditionally round, if even a poor person wanted to participate in them, and by the way, he did not express such a desire, well, but anyway, even in the first round he is already defeating zelensky, this is

unacceptable for him, firstly, secondly, it is necessary to understand that the president's office is panickingly afraid of the date of may 20, that is, the moment when it ends volodymyr's official tenure zelenskyi, because unlike the verkhovna rada, which, although it has sat through its term, it has a very important clause in the law on the verkhovna rada, which clearly states that the term of the previous, well , verkhovna rada ends with the beginning of the term of the next one, instead in the law about nothing like this, it means that...

come on, they understand perfectly well that sooner or later they will still have to hold elections, accordingly, the sooner they remove zaluzhny from office, the sooner, as they think, it will happen to him like aristovych, they say, aristovych was already popular, and we removed him and that was all, and he was puffed up, but in the same way, the hard-working ones should be removed earlier, so that means, you know, they don’t respect people, they think that people are fishy goons, what type, you cleaned them , something out of sight, but they immediately forgot, but what you and i saw on monday, unfortunately, is a classic method, and we continue to see it now, it is a classic method, a bastard method of that, you know, administration named after vladimir oleksandrovich, who what does it consist of what does it mean like, we are trying to dump all the negativity even in the dismissal of the employee on himself, that is, the idea was that he would come, they would press him, he would agree, write a statement himself, he refused, and the information about it got out right away, well, then we saw the poor attempts of volodymyr zelenskyi and his entourage

to somehow downplay this whole story. and also to make guilty those who wrote absolutely real insiders about what happened there, unfortunately, this is more terrible in this story, it is not even that they are trying to release zaluzhny, after all, listen, zelenskyi is already personally responsible for everything , zelenskyi is also personally responsible for the release of zaluzhnyi, but how is it done, that is, the whole country is in a state of stupid frustration for 5 days, i am already silent about the fact that in most people it causes one reaction, that in hope is taken from us, victory will be stolen from us, faith in the fact that something can be normal is taken away from us. ok but how is it done? it is done with the utmost disrespect for people, that is, they, through their telegrams, trash all kinds of even equals and who, they constantly pour out a bunch of unverified information in order to cause some kind of rejection, and then say: but you see, in fact, nothing happened, nothing happened, you lie, you lie, you know nothing, these journalists of yours, they are all stupid, stupid, and we only know everything, we are the most intelligent, you see, and this is simply a crime, the cases are not even dismissed

without merit. in that i will repeat how much disrespect and outright contempt this is done to all people, i am honest, friends, i but most of all, i ask you to remember not only that, they will still be fired in good faith, i have no doubts about this, but how it is done, you understand that this actually shows the real attitude of these people to the people of ukraine, that is, to such , you know, speechless biomass, which should just nod its mane and read stinking telegram trash that you... a bunch of these people, i won't say bad words on the air, so that, well , although i don't know if it can have any effect on you some complaints, but, well, that is a very beautiful picture, i have no doubt that they are anyway , they will return to this story in the near future, because the problem they have is due to the fact that they believe that it should be removed right now, before he goes on some political story, like this, thank you bohdan, oleksiy, please , so i 'll just go back to where i started, which is...