Replacing Zelensky: Does It Matter?

Security Issues in Europe Need to be on the Table

by Stephen Bryen

Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) says that the “west” is planning to replace Zelensky and will soon embark on a campaign to discredit him.  Allegedly the candidate to replace him, says the SVR, is Arsen Avakov.  He previously served as a Minister of Interior which in many countries is the organization that runs the country’s intelligence agencies (other than military intelligence which in Ukraine is placed under the military but mainly reports directly to the President). Avakov, according to the SVR, has strong links to European leaders and also to “nationalist” groups in Ukraine.

Whether the SVR report is real intelligence or simply an effort by the Russians to stir the pot in Ukraine is not at all clear.

‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a handout photograph released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service on December 6, 2023

Ties to nationalist groups means ties to organizations such as the Azov brigade.  The Azovites feature a neo-Nazi type of ideology and are one of the far-right groups operating in Ukraine.

One of the reasons the west wants to dump Zelensky, according to the SVR, is his unwillingness to negotiate with Russia unless many preconditions are accepted including a full withdrawal of the Russian army from Ukrainian territory.  Actually Zelensky’s conditions on any deal with Russia align quite well with Azov and other far right organizations, so the SVR belief that the west wants to facilitate negotiations by promoting Avakov, seems contradictory.

The Russians have been making the point for some time that Zelensky is not a legitimate leader of Ukraine as his electoral mandate expired last May and Zelensky refused to hold elections.  While there are some provisions of the Ukrainian constitution relating to the imposition of martial law that permit bypassing elections, nonetheless exploiting that constitutional loophole does not help Zelensky, whose popularity has been tanking recently.

The fact that Ukrainians are willing to show that they do not support Zelensky is fairly remarkable in a state where normal freedoms are restricted and where the press is tightly controlled.

The other problem bedeviling Zelensky is the state of the Ukrainian army and the resistance to recruiting new soldiers  Despite the incursion in Kursk, Ukraine has been steadily losing ground on the battlefield and suffering high casualties.  It isn’t clear how much longer that can go on, but it is possible that analysts in the US and Europe are starting to grasp the need to end the war before the Ukrainian edifice crumbles.

There has been a lot of swirl over the summer as various Zelensky replacements have begun to garner attention.  Most of them are old hands who have served before, and none of them necessarily have a demonstrable popular following.  Among them are the mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, former President Petro Poroshenko, and former Ukrainian President Yulia Tymoshenko.

It is clear that Zelensky is starting to gamble given the deteriorating conditions in the country.  That gambling is clearly evident in the Kursk invasion, but it also is manifest in attacks on sensitive installations inside Russia and elsewhere, including the drone attack in mid-August on the Zaphorize nuclear power plant (and the threat to the Kursk nuclear power plant).  These sorts of attacks threaten Russia and Ukraine, but also Europe if a massive nuclear incident occurs, just as Europe was threatened when a reactor at Chernobyl went critical in 1986 and caught fire.  Ukraine has destroyed a couple of nuclear bombers in attacks on air bases in Russia, damaged or destroyed two strategic radar stations in Russia that are part of Russia’s nuclear triad,  and (according to the Russians) are attacking civilian apartment blocks and towns and villages in the Kursk area and Belgorod. Allegedly some NATO partners have told the Ukrainians they can’t use long range weapons supplied to Ukraine for attacks on Russian territory, although there is no open evidence of the ban.

NATO is also distancing itself from the Kursk operation, although it would seem, given the use of a so-called International Brigade in the incursion, that NATO elements were involved in the planning and execution of the operation.  It is hard to be sure, but it is possible that NATO’s political leaders are not in full control of NATO command elements working in Ukraine, or alternatively that they do not want to be blamed for attacks on Russian soil given the possibility of Russian retaliation.

Most NATO partners are now saying that Russia needs to be included in forthcoming peace negotiations, but there is no agreement on the format of such negotiations or the line up of participants.  Even Zelensky is saying so. Meanwhile the Russians are saying they are not interested.  As there are no offers on the table that would draw Russia into a serious discussion, it remains to be seen if one can emerge in the near future.

The issues between Ukraine and Russia go beyond Ukraine and involve NATO, its presence in Ukraine, and the overall security framework in Europe.  The truth is no one in the west is talking about the NATO part of the equation, so replacing Zelensky won’t make any real difference until the top security issues between NATO and Russia are addressed.

Stephen Bryen is a former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense and is a leading expert in security strategy and technology. Bryen writes for Asia Times, American Thinker, Epoch Times, Newsweek, Washington Times, the Jewish Policy Center and others.