Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief, has given his first public speech in his new role as his country’s ambassador to Britain. The occasion – surely carefully chosen – was the annual Land Warfare Conference at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the UK’s oldest and still premier military and geopolitical think tank.
It was a high-level setting; other speakers included General Roland Walker, Chief of Britain’s General Staff and Admiral Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff. Zaluzhny of course, was a high-level guest too: De facto exiled to Britain after losing a power struggle against Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, rumors about a future return to Ukraine and a powerful position there have never died down.
According to a Telegraph correspondent who was in the audience, Zaluzhny’s address was mostly delivered in Ukrainian, as the ambassador’s English is, to put it bluntly, unusually weak for a diplomat, especially one sent to London. But Zaluzhny published the speech on his Telegram channel under the somewhat awkward title: “The Russian-Ukrainian War as a War of Transitional period. New patterns of the war.” This version’s also less than perfect English does make you wonder about the staff resources at the Ukrainian embassy (not a single person capable of some basic editing?), but Zaluzhny’s meaning comes through loud and clear.
Zaluzhny started on a note of corny philosophizing and gauche confusion: After being treated to the hackneyed phrase “Si vis pacem, para bellum” (If you want peace, prepare for war), his listeners must have been intrigued to hear Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief equate killing in war with murder. Usually, that is a position associated with radical pacifism. Some may have been surprised to hear that the total number of casualties of World War I and II taken together was 60 million. Unfortunately, it was significantly higher. (Also “Carl,” not “Karl,” von Clausewitz; if you want to boast using authors you clearly have not read, at least check the spelling.)
But World War III was Zaluzhny’s real theme at RUSI, in two respects. Ostensibly, the ambassador who used to be a general was talking about how to avoid it, but in reality the general inside the ambassador was really giving advice on how to wage it. In Zaluzhny’s defense, his idea of preserving the peace is so crude that the two aims easily converge. In his single-track mind, the only key to peace is deterrence by military power. But this total neglect of any role for diplomacy and compromise is, of course, what his Western........