"The smell of war hung in the air." As Zaluzhny prepared the Armed Forces for battle with Russia and what he told about himself and the war for the first time: 10 facts from Time Article

The influential American Time magazine devoted the cover of a new number Valery Zaluzhnaya, commander -in -chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (Armed Forces). Zaluzhny gave Time a single interview since the beginning of the Russian invasion.

The material uses not only its fragments, but also the facts of the biography of Zaluzhny, a description of its role in the reforms of the Armed Forces and preparation of Ukraine for war, as well as the evaluation of recent successes of Ukrainian forces in the counter -offensive. The text about Valery Zaluzhny also contains comments from the profile Western specialists and a number of Ukrainian officials who, for their part, characterize the Commander -in -Chief of the Armed Forces.

Video of the day of the publication notes that the General has become for Ukraine and the world "the face of war" with the Russian Federation - although he is only one of many Ukrainians, thanks to which the Armed Forces manages to resist the larger army of the enemy.

Other key Ukrainian Time officers are called Colonel-General Alexander Sirsky, commander of the Land Forces of Ukraine, who directed the defense of Kiev and the counter-offensive in the East-as well as Kirill Budanov, head of the GUR Defense Ministry of Ukraine. Time journalists indicate that they talked with Zaluzhny in June.

A little earlier, in May 2022, Time included Vladimir Zelensky, Valery Zaluzhny and the editor -in -chief of Ukrainian Truth Sevgil Musayev on the list of 100 most influential people in the world. Then Mark Millie, the chairman of the Joint Committee of the Headquarters of the US Army, wrote that Zaluzhny revealed "the military intelligence he needed his country" and therefore, under his leadership, the Armed Forces were able to quickly adapt to fighting against the Russians.

NV has collected the most interesting and new facts about Valery Zaluzhny from Time. The following title was made to the magazine cover: “General. Valery Zaluzhny and Ukrainian way of war.

" *** When at the end of July 2021, Valery Zaluzhny first heard from the assistants of President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky that he was ready to invite him to head the Armed Forces of Ukraine, he replied stunningly: "What do you mean?" When it became clear that Zaluzhny and indeed be the commander -in -chief, he felt "not just a blow below the belt, but immediately knocks," General Time was told.

Presidential Head Andriy Yermak told the publication that he shared with Zelensky's thought of Zaluzhny as a "rather professional, intelligent person" for the post of commander -in -chief of the Armed Forces, but a call with such a proposal was made personally by the President. Zaluzhny recalls that he received this call when he drank beer at the celebration of his wife's birthday - and went out to answer the mobile call.

So he received a "new job", describes the situation of Time, reminding that Zelensky decided to change the Commander -in -Chief of the Armed Forces against the backdrop of alarming reports about the collection of Russian forces to the border of Ukraine and the fears of the United States that Ukraine can be a victim of a full -scale attack of the Russian Federation.

Unlike Zelensky, who was skeptical of US intelligence data about the inevitability of a massive invasion of Russia, Zaluzhny belonged to that part of Ukrainian officers who considered it only as a matter of time, Time writes. He began to make important changes in the Army of Ukraine a few weeks after he occupied the post of commander -in -chief of the Armed Forces.

The general allowed officers on the front line (then in the OOS zone) to open fire in response to Russia's attacks on any available weapon, without the permission of the senior command. "We needed to knock their desire to attack," Zaluzhny explains. "We needed to show our teeth. " In conversation with Time Valery Zaluzhny, he said that he was well aware of the so -called.

"Gerasimov's doctrine" and read "Everything I wrote" about the modern war Valery Gerasimov, the current chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Zaluzhny made it clear to American journalists that he was waiting for the Army of Gerasimov much more in the war against Ukraine. This episode, which Valery Zaluzhny himself told, happened in early February, when there were weeks remained before the invasion of Russia.

At that time, Ukraine decided to conduct ambitious military exercises with the involvement of thousands of military personnel of the Armed Forces, the main maneuvers of which had to simulate the Russian attack and identify real gaps in the defense of Ukraine. Zaluzhny considered these exercises a central element of Ukraine's defense strategy and its "best chance of survival", Time notes, but a number of commanders of the Armed Forces, in his opinion, were not serious enough.

"I shouted for an hour," he remembers. "I broke. " The publication also emphasizes that at that moment at the table surrounding the Zaluzhny was the warlords mostly older and more experienced than him, and for the Armed Forces commander himself was an uncharacteristic moment of emotions - he has no reputation of a person who easily loses coldness.

"I explained to them that if they do not cope with this [conducting the exercises as effectively], the consequences will cost us not only lives but also our country," Time Zaluzhny quotes. Zaluzhny also told how the Ukrainian warlords were preparing for the Russian invasion shortly before him: they relocated and masked military equipment, withdrew troops and weapons from bases, moving them.

Such maneuvers concerned aircraft, tanks, armored vehicles, as well as anti -aircraft batteries that were critical for Ukraine to maintain control of their sky. "The smell of war is not confused with anything, and it has already hung in the air," says Zaluzhny. However, the details of his strategy was kept secret. "I was afraid that we would lose an element of surprise," he says.

"We needed the opponent to think that we were all stationed on our usual bases, smoking the grass, watching TV and fast on Facebook. " When the army of the Russian Federation invaded Ukrainian land on February 24, General Zaluzhny had two strategic goals of Ukraine's defense, Time writes. The first is to keep the capital. "We could not allow Kyiv to fall," the Commander of the Armed Forces said in an interview. The second is to make the enemy lose as much strength during the offensive.

"In the rest of other directions, we needed to force them [Russians] to shed our blood, even if in some areas it would mean to lose the territory," Zaluzhny explains. In other words, the Time journalists explain, the goal was to allow the Russians to move forward and then destroy their advanced columns and rear supply lines. By the sixth day of the invasion, the Commander of the Armed Forces came to the conclusion that such tactics were working.

The Russians were unable to capture airports around Kiev, but advanced deep enough so that the lines of supply of Russian troops would remain vulnerable, and the supply shortage has become a problem for the invaders' army. At the same time, Zaluzhny notes that he was surprised by the rude miscalculations of the Russian command.

When the enemy first met a strong resistance to the Armed Forces and then began to lose the opportunity to transfer supply to the advanced troops, he did not attempt to retreat or change the approach to attacks. "They just drove their soldiers to the slaughterhouse," says Zaluzhny. "They chose the scenario that was most appropriate for me. " Mark Millie, Chairman of the Joint Committee of the Headquarters of the US Army Headquarters, told about it.

The American colleague of Zaluzhnya admits that in the first weeks of the war he was amazed, seeing how the Ukrainians were standing. During that period, Millie asked Zaluzhny if he was planning to evacuate in a safer place. "I told him," I don't understand you, "Zaluzhny says. "For me, the war began in 2014 . . . I didn't run then and I'm not going to run now.

" When Volodymyr Zelenskyy became President of Ukraine in 2019, Valery Zaluzhny was the head of the United Operational Staff of the Armed Forces - the first deputy commander of the Joint Forces. It was he who had to inform the new president about military operations and command structures of the Armed Forces, resembles Time. Zaluzhny knew that Zelensky had never served in the army, but did not intend to "teach him the tactical intricacies of war", the newspaper reports.

He still maintains this opinion. "He [the President] needs to understand military affairs no more than in medicine or bridge construction," says Zaluzhny. To his surprise, Zelensky seems to have agreed. "This turned out to be one of the strongest features [Zelensky]," says Alexei Melnyk, former Assistant Minister of Defense of Ukraine. He allowed his generals to "rule without direct interference in military affairs", states Time.

Valery Zaluzhny made it clear to Time journalists that he was ready for a long and difficult war, as well as the fact that the victory of Ukraine would not have a point in it. "Knowing what I know about the Russians is not from rumors, [I can say that] our victory will not be the finale," he said the American magazine. "Our victory will be able to breathe and prepare for the next war.

" In his publication, Time adds individual strokes to the character of the general, who manages the Army of Ukraine in the hardest and most experienced war for her. The publication notes that it is easy to underestimate: when the Zaluzhny can afford not to dress, it "prefers T -shirts and shorts that correspond to its lightness of humor.

" The magazine also notes that despite its current image of the ambitious and persistent warlord, the image of the commander with a fastening nature, who was more famous for his jokes than disciplinary penalties, had also had the image of the commander of Zaluzhny.

Time also reminds that Zaluzhny was traveling with the career ladder "together with the new generation of officers who were united by very different epochs: they grew up in Soviet Ukraine, but sought to get rid of the USSR military dogmas. " In his master's thesis, Zaluzhny analyzed the military structure of the US Army.