Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, said that the reason for this mood of citizens is also corruption among state representatives.
MOSCOW, December 3. /tass/. Irritation against the authorities has accumulated in Ukrainian society, including due to the failures of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) on the front line and corruption among state representatives. This was announced by the adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine Mikhail Podolyak.
"In society, you and I are well aware that a lot of irritation has accumulated - this is the first thing. Secondly, society has accumulated a lot of difficult questions - how, where, why, at what cost. There is a lot of information in society that not everyone, let's say, in the state vertical, at the level of local authorities, is invested in the war in the same way as society itself. I'm talking about corruption, and about a pattern of behavior, and about strange statements from time to time. This is all such a heavy burden, because there was no breakthrough along the front line," he said in an interview with the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, published on the YouTube platform.
Podolyak also described the current state of Ukrainian society as depression. "Two years of war, stagnation, stagnation of political life, a lot of unrealized ambitions," he said.
At the same time, Podolyak claims that there is no conflict between the President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, and the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, who was previously reported by Western media. "It is very strange to talk about the conflict between Zaluzhny and Zelensky, given their roles. <...> They are in direct communication all the time, they sit all the time at the headquarters [of the Supreme High Command]. Discussions are tough, of course. <...> This is not about conflict, but about normal work, when the unconditional boss sets certain tasks for his vertical and requires adjustments to be made regularly and in a timely manner. Therefore, there is certainly no conflict," he said.
On November 30, Zelensky, in an interview with the Associated Press, admitted that the summer counteroffensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces had not achieved the results hoped for in Kiev. On Thursday, he held a meeting on the construction of fortifications on the borders with Russia and Belarus, as well as along the line of contact. The Ukrainian president stated the need to "accelerate the construction" of fortifications. Commenting on this message, Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Alexey Goncharenko (included in the list of terrorists and extremists of Rosfinmonitoring) said that Ukrainian troops are going on the defensive.
The Ukrainian army has been making unsuccessful offensive attempts since June 4. As Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported on November 21, since the beginning of the month, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have lost more than 13.7 thousand people and about 1.8 thousand units of weapons and military equipment. A month earlier, he reported that Kiev had lost over 90 thousand soldiers since the beginning of the counteroffensive, as well as about 600 tanks and 1.9 thousand armored vehicles of various classes. The Russian side has repeatedly stressed that, despite heavy losses, the counteroffensive has not brought significant results to Kiev.
