Welcome to Office Hours. Come in! This is a regular subscribers-only column where I share what I’m reading and watching, and respond to questions from readers.
It’s been a good week for Ukraine, so here comes Zaluzhnyi to pour some cold water on the refinery fire footage. His new piece is titled “Do not assume Russia has lost the war” and the core claim is as old as warfare itself: don’t mistake tactical success for strategic victory.
A former general now running Ukraine’s embassy in London, Zaluzhnyi has been making this argument since 2023, when he called the war positional in an essay for The Economist. Zelensky corrected him in public and within months he was out of his command and posted to Britain.
Zaluzhnyi argues that Western analysts who see Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes as evidence of imminent Russian defeat are making a category error, seeing individual tactical successes through a strategic framework that doesn’t really appl…
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.