The other event yesterday of which I wanted to take note is Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s firing of two generals. The words “saboteurs” and “traitors” were used. Gerrard Kaonga reports at Newsweek:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has decided to fire two of his top officials and has dubbed them “traitors.”
In an address on Friday morning, the President announced that he had fired the chief of Main Department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Naumov Andriy Olehovych.
He also removed the head of the SBU in Kherson, Kryvoruchko Serhiy Oleksandrovych.
I also listened to President Zelenskyy’s announcement (in Ukrainian). I don’t speak Ukrainian but I could follow the gist of it. I’m sure if I listened to Ukrainian more frequently I would understand more of it. He didn’t add any real details in his announcement.
Military experts here in the U. S. have remarked that there’s nothing unusual about firing generals in the course of a war. It seems to me that there is something unusual about dismissing generals on the grounds that they don’t know where their loyalties lie. Maybe I’m mistaken and that goes on all of the time.
I have no way of determining what that means. It could simply mean that their performance was lacking. It could mean they were Russian agents or ethnic Russian or both or neither. It could mean all sorts of things. I simply can’t tell. I was reminded of Voltaire’s wisecrack about the execution of Admiral Byng: Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres (In this country it is good to execute an admiral from time to time to encourage the others).
It’s hard to believe the generals were disloyal, there was a major purge of the Ukrainian military of pro-Russian officers after the coup in 2014. Most likely this is just a face-saving gesture to cover over the Ukrainian defeat.
And Ukraine has been defeated, just as France was in WW II. It took another month or to complete the occupation of France, but it was over in the first six weeks.
bob sykes: And Ukraine has been defeated
“If we are victorious in one more battle, we shall be utterly ruined.” — Pyrrhus after the Battle of Asculum