Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valery Zaluzhny is not in Ukraine, but abroad. The Head of State said so during the closed-door part of the meeting with military correspondents held on June 13. A fragment of the conversation from the program “Moscow. Kremlin. Cheese fries” was published by VGTRK journalist Pavel Zarubin in his telegram channel .
Responding to a question from military correspondent Alexander Sladkov about Zaluzhny’s whereabouts, Putin said:
“I know. I feel like I know. Well, you can ask him. But for that you have to switch to a foreign language. I think he’s abroad. But I could be wrong. ”
In mid-May, reports appeared in the media and telegrams that Zaluzhny had been injured. In the context of these reports, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not appear in public for several days and, among other things, refused to participate in the meeting of the NATO committee due to the “tense operational situation” in Ukraine.
May 24, RIA Novosti, citing a source, reported that Zaluzhny suffered head injuries following a missile attack by Russian troops on a command post near Kherson and suffered a craniotomy. Military correspondent Andriy Rudenko, citing a source at the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine writing that the commander-in-chief is in the main military clinical hospital and is in critical condition after being injured in one of the command posts of the Eastern Group of Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry did not confirm information about Zaluzhny’s injury, releasing a video on May 25 with the commander-in-chief sitting at a table in his office. On June 6, Zelenskyy posted a photo of an emergency meeting on the situation at the Kakhovskaya HPP, where you can see the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin argued that the Russian authorities receive information on the state of health of Zaluzhny, but there is no guarantee of its reliability. “Maybe I will disappoint you, but I am unlikely to tell you anything beyond your knowledge. I don’t think it’s worth paying close attention to this,” he said. declared.
At the end of May, the Russian Interior Ministry put Valery Zaluzhny on the wanted list. A few days earlier, the Investigative Committee (IC) announced that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine had been charged in absentia in a criminal case under the article “Use of means and methods of warfare prohibited” (part 1 of article 356 of the Penal Code). As reported in the UK, as a result of the actions of Zaluzhny and other high-ranking Ukrainian military personnel in the Donbass, “dozens of civilians, including children, were killed and injured, hundreds of civilian infrastructure destroyed been damaged”.
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