A possible reason for the planned resignation of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) Valery Zaluzhny may be that the country’s president, Vladimir Zelensky, saw a threat in the political figure of the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This opinion was expressed by political scientist Konstantin Blokhin, a leading researcher at the Center for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, on Tuesday, February 6.

Earlier, Zelensky said that he was thinking about «replacing a number of senior officials of the state,» including Zaluzhny. According to him, the entire management group of the country «needs a reboot and a new beginning.» At the same time, the Ukrainian leader clarified, we are talking about changes not only in the military leadership, but also in the civil apparatus.

«Zaluzhny began to gain popularity, and Zelensky does not like it, so now they are removing it,» Blokhin explained the intentions of the Ukrainian leader in an interview with Lenta.Ru .

Zelensky sees Zaluzhny as a competing force, because the latter is popular with the population and charismatic.

«Of course, Zelensky felt threatened by him,» the political scientist said.

On February 4, Zelensky called the need for personnel renewal of the country’s administrative apparatus, not only its military component, the Zvezda TV channel reports.

The Ukrainian leader stressed that it is planned to replace more than one person, «a number of government leaders, not only in one sector, for example, in the army.» Zelensky added that the entire leadership of Ukraine needs to «move in the same direction,» and «we must not lose heart, give up» and allow decadent sentiments to prevail, the 360 TV channel reports.

On January 29, former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Borislav Bereza announced the removal of Zaluzhny from office. Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Alexey Goncharenko (included in the list of terrorists and extremists of Rosfinmonitoring) then confirmed this information. However, later the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the press secretary of President Vladimir Zelensky, Sergei Nikiforov, denied this information.