The president said “a reset” was needed to revive the struggling war effort, adding that his plans were “about the direction of the country’s leadership.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that a broad overhaul of Ukraine’s military and civilian leadership was needed to reboot the country’s war effort, suggesting that a major shake-up of his government was imminent.
Mr. Zelensky’s comments, in a broadcast aired on Sunday night, indicated that his plans went beyond replacing the top military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny. Tensions between the military and civilian leadership, which have been building for months, seemed to reach a breaking point last week, when Mr. Zelensky summoned the general for a meeting to tell him he was being fired, according to Ukrainian officials familiar with the discussion.
However, the decision was put on hold, creating a sense of limbo at the top of the government at a precarious moment in the war.
“A reset, a new beginning is necessary,” Mr. Zelensky told the Italian media outlet Rai News in the Sunday night broadcast. “I have something serious in mind, which is not about a single person but about the direction of the country’s leadership.”
Depleted Ukrainian forces are struggling to hold back renewed Russian offensives across the front, with the epicenter of the fighting around the battered city of Avdiivka in the eastern Donetsk region.