Back
Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The Ambassador of Ukraine to the United Kingdom, Valeriy Zaluzhny, was not invited to the meeting between the president and the newly appointed UK Secretary of Defence Ben Wallace, which took place 5 August. Zaluzhny’s camp claims that he was simply not invited to the event. The Office of the President, in turn, says that participation in such meetings is at the initiative of the ambassador himself, and he chose to attend a different event.
The European Pravda reported disagreements between Valeriy Zaluzhny and the Office of the President regarding this episode. In the official photos and video of the meeting, the British ambassador is present, but the Ukrainian diplomat is not. Those close to Zaluzhny explain this by saying the ambassador was not informed about the event in advance.
"The Ambassador Valeriy Zaluzhny was not invited to the meeting between the President of Ukraine and the British Defence Minister," said Zaluzhny’s media spokesperson Oksana Torop to European Pravda.
President’s adviser Dmytro Lytvyn gave a different version of events. According to him, ambassadors’ participation in meetings at a level below prime minister or president is an "initiative matter," and it is up to the ambassador to express interest in attending.
"There is a long-standing customary protocol that when meeting with the prime minister or president of another country, the ambassador in that country almost always attends, and if the level is lower, each ambassador independently determines and informs if they will participate in the meeting. Today, as far as we know, the ambassador is participating in the MFA events within the framework of the annual ambassadors’ conference," said Dmytro Lytvin, the president’s adviser.
However, according to sources of the publication not independently confirmed by official comments, Zaluzhny learned about the meeting only after it had ended — and therefore could not have informed in advance of his desire to participate.
An asymmetry was revealed in the group photo from the ambassadors’ meeting.
Attention is drawn to the joint photo of the participants of the annual meeting of Ukrainian ambassadors. In it Zaluzhny is placed in the last row, while former US ambassador Olha Stefanishyna is placed in the front row, next to the president.
The photo was taken shortly before Stefanishyna’s dismissal and the filing of suspicions of corruption against her, but her front-row position was kept. Zaluzhny, who holds a similar ambassadorial post in the United Kingdom, ended up at the very end of the composition — a detail journalists link to the overall dynamic of the relationship between the ambassador and Bankova.
Zaluzhny made a resonant statement about NATO.
Earlier Informator reported that Zaluzhny issued a statement claiming that Ukraine significantly outpaces NATO, which allegedly is preparing for an "old war" rather than modern challenges. This statement came amid his remarks that Ukraine will never become a member of the Alliance, contrary to constitutional norms.
We also wrote that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs commented on Zaluzhny’s statement about Ukraine’s impossibility of joining NATO, emphasizing that there are no alternatives to Alliance membership for the country. Both of the ambassador’s statements triggered a wave of criticism and internal debate within the country.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "На Банковій зібралися усунути Залужного з посади - зʼявилися всі ознаки". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Informator.
