This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
The mayor of Ukraine’s capital city is feuding with the president. The defense minister is under investigation as part of a bitter fight over control of weapons purchases. Recruiters are struggling to get enough men to the front. Ukrainians are fighting calls to lower the draft age.
And last week, two more towns fell to Russian forces, though the losses were more symbolic than tactical.
Ukraine is struggling to fight an existential war of defense, trying to hold back the nearly 3-year-old all-out invasion by Russia. Exhausted and battered, the population has mainly continued to rally behind the leadership of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But fractures are appearing in the country’s leadership and political class. How wide and deep they may become is an open question.
Regardless, they come at an inopportune moment for Kyiv, as momentum builds for a cease-fire with Moscow, with Ukraine’s main weapons provider, the United States, eager to end the war and diplomacy heating up ahead of the Munich Security Conference this weekend.
“These facts tell you that the political process remains active in Ukraine even during the war,” said Orysia Lutsevych, a Ukraine analyst at the London-based think tank Chatham House. “There is much hope that there could indeed be a cease-fire and that political competition will restart. It is almost like returning to normal life, to have elections and to have competition.”
War: A Continuation Of Politics By Other Means
On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces have been on the back foot for months, going as far back as February 2024.
Last August, Ukraine tried to change the narrative, staging an audacious cross-border assault on Russia’s Kursk region, the biggest invasion of Russia by foreign troops since World War II. Kyiv hoped it would relieve pressure elsewhere along the front line and prove to its Western backers it was still nimble and capable of battlefield ingenuity.
The West was definitely surprised, but Russian troops did not redeploy from elsewhere. Across the autumn and into the winter, Ukraine was forced to steadily retreat in multiple locations.
Velyka Novosilka, a southern Donbas town along the meandering river valley, fell to the Russians as Ukrainian officials, on January 27, confirmed the withdrawal of the 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade. A few days later, Russian forces took control of the last remnants of Kurakhove, pushing Ukrainian troops west toward the city of Zaporizhzhya.
Major General Mykhaylo Drapatiy, the new commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, was ordered to take direct command of the eastern front, a move many saw as a possible indication of how worried commanders might be about defenses.
Capital City Wrangling
Back in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko, a former heavyweight boxing champion, fired a public broadside on January 29, accusing Zelenskyy’s presidential office of political intrigue with its choice of a new military administrator for the city.
Military administrators have been put in place across the country since the onset of the invasion as a way to streamline coordination between civilian and military authorities. But the appointment of Tymur Tkachenko a month earlier had “political motives,” Klitschko asserted, charging that Tkachenko was “interfering in and blocking of economic activity” in the capital.
“I am addressing the president of Ukraine,” Klitschko said in a video posted to Telegram. “While you, as the supreme commander-in-chief, are focused on the war and the defense of Ukraine, people around you are tirelessly engaged in political intrigue.”
Tkachenko punched back.
“I am not inclined to organize political shows like people who have been in the city government for decades,” he said. “We will solve the problems of the city and help the people of Kyiv.”
Procurement Problems
The Defense Ministry, meanwhile, is embroiled in pitched bureaucratic warfare over how weaponry is procured for the armed forces.
The Defense Procurement Agency was established in 2022 as a way to manage the flood of weaponry — both from abroad and from within the country — that Ukraine needs to arm its military. Previously, arms procurement had been dogged by corruption and graft.
On January 31, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov dismissed the head of the agency, Maria Bezrukova, accusing her of mismanagement.
Bezrukova in turn denied the accusation and claimed Umerov’s dismissal order was illegal because the agency’s supervisory board had extended her contract. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau, an independent law enforcement agency, then jumped into the fray, opening an investigation and saying Umerov may have violated the law by not recognizing her contract extension.
The turmoil drew concern from the Group of Seven nations: “Compliance with good governance principles and NATO recommendations is essential to maintaining the trust of the public and international partners,” they said in a statement.
More Men, More Boys
Ukraine’s battlefield woes stem in large part from its inability to send enough men to bolster exhausted and depleted units struggling to fend off a bigger, better-armed Russian military. Despite passing legislation last year to overhaul the existing system, officials have still struggled to recruit and train enough men.
Highlighting the recruiting difficulties is the scandal surrounding the 155th Separate Mechanized Brigade, a French-trained and -armed unit that was supposed to be a vanguard of a modernized armed force for Ukraine. Instead, the unit saw scores of men deserting; its commander was relieved of duty just before the unit deployed to the Donbas, and investigators are looking closely at what went wrong. Zelenskyy ordered a halt to the creation of similar brigades.
U.S. and other Western officials have called for lowering the conscription age from 25 to 18. Zelenskyy has resisted, fearing it would decimate the country’s already fragile demographics, making it impossible to increase the population in the future.
Elephant In The Room
Looming over all this is the prospect of peace talks. The Trump administration has signaled it will use a mix of coercion and inducements to get Kyiv and Moscow to at least sit down and negotiate.
Among the issues on the table: whether Ukraine should suspend martial law to allow for new presidential elections, which have been prohibited since the start of the Russian invasion. Zelenskyy won a five-year term in 2019.
A poll published February 3 that asked Ukrainians which public figures they trusted the most found that Valeriy Zaluzhniy, the former commander-in-chief, topped the list. Since being appointed ambassador to Britain, Zaluzhniy has kept a low political profile, but many see him as a strong contender if there is an election.
He was followed in the ranking by Kyrylo Budanov, the sphinx-like head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, and Oleksandr Usyk, who last year won the world heavyweight boxing title.
In fourth place: Zelenskyy.
Experts say Zelenskyy’s political advisers are aware Zaluzhniy would be a formidable rival in an election. Since his move to London, most of the gruff former general’s public statements have called for national solidarity in the fight against a foreign enemy.
There’s also the fear that Russia could meddle in any Ukrainian election — as it has done in the past.
Sergei Zhuk, a fellow at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington and a professor at Ball State University in Indiana, told RFE/RL in an interview last month that the Kremlin could use its powerful propaganda machine and pro-Russia elements inside Ukraine to destabilize the country during elections.
Also lurking in the background: former President Petro Poroshenko, whom Zelenskyy defeated in 2019. Poroshenko’s supporters appear to be laying the groundwork for him to run again, although he is still widely unpopular.
“There was always this discussion about mobilization, the level of war-time tax, procurement process at the [Defense Ministry], building defenses around power stations,” Lutsevych said. “There is unity where it matters in war: about the enemy, and that enemy is Russia.”