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Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s former army chief now serving as ambassador to Britain, told The Associated Press that he and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have a “deep rift” that dates to the early months of the war after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. He said he has avoided discussing political ambitions during the conflict, saying he does not want to risk harming national unity. Still, he described public comments and personal accounts that position his role as distinct from Zelenskyy’s wartime leadership.
Zaluzhnyi said tensions emerged soon after the invasion and repeatedly flared between the two men over how Ukraine should defend itself. He said the relationship deteriorated further later in 2022, when, he said, dozens of agents from Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service arrived at his office. Zaluzhnyi told AP that the incident risked exposing their rivalry at a time when national unity, he said, was paramount.
Zaluzhnyi alleged that the raid was intimidation. He said that during the raid he called Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andrii Yermak, and warned that he was prepared to call in the military to stop it and protect the command center. He told AP he said, “I will fight with you and have already called in reinforcements to the center of Kyiv for support.” He also said he phoned the head of the security service at the time, Vasyl Maliuk, asking what was happening, and that Maliuk told him he knew nothing about the raid and promised to look into it.
The SBU said it did not conduct a search at Zaluzhnyi’s office. In an SBU statement, the agency said no search was carried out at the address and that the situation was clarified after Maliuk and Zaluzhnyi spoke. The statement also acknowledged that the address was part of an investigation into organized crime, described by AP as unrelated to Zaluzhnyi. AP said it could not independently confirm Zaluzhnyi’s account of the raid.
Zaluzhnyi said he was seeking unity through wartime conduct and kept politics off limits until the fighting ends or martial law ends. He told AP, “Until the war is over or martial law ends, I am not discussing this and have done nothing toward that.” Even after he said he avoided political discussion, he described how military disagreements continued between him and Zelenskyy, including over the 2023 counteroffensive that military experts criticized as too ambitious and arriving too late.
Zaluzhnyi said he and others had prepared a plan built around concentrating forces into a “single fist” to retake parts of Zaporizhzhia and then push south toward the Sea of Azov. He said that severing a land corridor Russia used to resupply Crimea was central to the effort. He told AP that, in practice, forces were spread over a wide area, which he said diluted their striking power, and he said the plan failed because Zelenskyy and other officials would not commit the resources it required. AP reported that two Western defense officials corroborated his account of the counteroffensive diverging from the original plan, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
As the war drags on, Zaluzhnyi has increasingly been seen as a potential political rival after the conflict ends. AP said the ex-army chief was widely perceived as Zelenskyy’s top political rival after Zelenskyy dismissed him as army chief in February 2024 and later announced he would be headed to London. Analysts cited by AP said the move was widely interpreted as limiting Zaluzhnyi’s potential political leverage by distancing him from day-to-day affairs in Ukraine.
AP also reported on polling and public sentiment around their leadership. It said polls have consistently shown Zaluzhnyi slightly ahead of Zelenskyy in a hypothetical race, with Zelenskyy’s popularity having waned as the war continued. AP said a corruption scandal involving several of Zelenskyy’s top officials has eroded public trust, and that Zelenskyy reshuffled his leadership team in an effort to restore confidence. An Ipsos poll published last month, AP said, showed support for Zaluzhnyi at 23% in a hypothetical future election compared with Zelenskyy’s 20%, based on the report.
In an account of his current role, Zaluzhnyi described avoiding involvement in Ukraine’s military decision-making since Zelenskyy pushed him out of the army command. AP said he told reporters he and Zelenskyy have had “absolutely friendly” conversations in the two occasions they met since he left Ukraine’s day-to-day leadership. Still, he criticized Ukraine’s war strategy, saying it depends on an unrealistic number of troops and that it is not organized effectively for how it develops and deploys new battlefield technologies.
Zaluzhnyi also described political outreach efforts toward him. He told AP that a “fairly well known” American political consultant approached him in the spring of 2025, and that an official close to him, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to comment publicly, identified the consultant as Paul Manafort. Zaluzhnyi told AP he responded by saying he did not need Manafort’s services: “I thanked him for paying attention to me, but said that I did not need his services.” AP reported that Manafort did not respond to messages seeking comment.
In its report, AP said it could not independently verify Zaluzhnyi’s account of the 2022 raid. It also noted that Zelenskyy’s office declined to comment for the story.