Ukrainian National Security Council chief Alexey Danilov is known to be one of the Zelensky regime’s most hawkish figures, which is why it’s so newsworthy that he just changed his tune about the conflict in his latest interview with the BBC that can be read here. To his interviewer’s credit, they bluntly asked him about his prediction back in May that the then-upcoming counteroffensive presented an “historic opportunity”, to which he sheepishly responded that “There were hopes, but they didn’t come true.”
Nevertheless, “That doesn’t mean that victory won’t be on our side”, Danilov insisted. He also added that “The fact that we have been defending our country for two years is already a big victory.” Quite clearly, Ukraine’s top security chief has been humbled by the failed counteroffensive, so much so that he then told the BBC that “People sometimes make mistakes. You cannot be an A-grader all your life.” He’s also struggling to cope with what happened as proven by him trying to spin defeat as a form of victory.
Danilov places some of the blame for this disaster on NATO, which echoes what the Washington Post earlier reported in their two–part series about what went wrong with the counteroffensive. According to the BBC, “He described the current situation on the frontline as ‘very difficult’ and said that old ‘textbooks’ for war – including Nato ones – ‘should be sent back to the archives’.” He also declined to say when the next counteroffensive will be, if ever, and instead simply promised to not stop fighting.
When asked about the congressional gridlock over aid to Ukraine, Danilov attempted to strike a calm and grateful tone that stood in stark contrast to Zelensky’s typically hysterical and ungrateful one. In his words, “If it happens so that we receive a gift before Christmas, we will be happy with that. But if it will happen a bit later, then it shouldn’t be made into a tragedy.” Even so, he’s still panicking deep down inside about the scenario of US aid stopping, which can’t be ruled out due to the present gridlock.
As the BBC reported: “Asked whether Ukraine would lose the war if US aid stopped, he refused to entertain the possibility, because ‘truth is on our side. Will Putin destroy us before humanity’s eyes? Will he be killing our children, our women, our elderly men? And will the whole world watch with their eyes closed? Then the question should be, in what world do we live?’” In other words, the regime will just screech about an alleged genocide if the purse strings are cut off, but it won’t be the end of the world.
The last part of his interview stood out because of how oddly he phrased his answer to the question of whether any tensions exist between Zelensky and Zaluzhny. Danilov said that “I do not confirm that any such things that are being articulated in the media today are real”, which required much more effort than just saying that it’s not true, irrespective of whether he was lying or not. Without intending to, his words will likely prompt even more speculation about the latest political intrigue in Kiev.
Reflecting on everything that Danilov revealed during his latest interview with the BBC, it’s obvious that he’s changed his tune about the conflict. Gone is his prior bravado and in its place is a comparatively more humbled man who’s applying the advice from the Financial Times’ recent article to inject a dose of “realism” into his assessments. At the same time, however, he’s still struggling to cope with the counteroffensive’s failure and the consequences that it’s had for American support of Ukraine.
That explains why he keeps parroting slogans about a supposedly inevitable victory even though they’re less intense than those spewed by Zelensky, who Time Magazine described as having messianic delusions of maximum victory over Russia per the words of an unnamed senior aide. Danilov sobered up quicker than his boss, but even he finds it difficult to accept what a disaster the counteroffensive has been, plus he’s likely self-censoring out of fear that he’ll come under more pressure if he’s too candid.
It was just two weeks ago that he retracted what he told the Times of London about how deeply Russian spies had allegedly infiltrated the SBU, the subsequent scandal of which was analyzed here, where it was assessed that the security services are becoming more divided as the conflict winds down. Danilov likely had this recent experience in mind when speaking to the BBC, thus partially accounting for why he repeated slogans that he himself as a leading security official knows very well to be false.
With this background in mind, it might be that he deliberately went a bit overboard coping in his latest interview in order to further assuage the secret police’s suspicions of his intentions after his earlier interview where he inadvertently discredited them as a den of Russian spies. After all, if it wasn’t for the presence of those slogans and the hysteria near the end about what would happen if the US aid stopped, then they might accuse him of so-called “defeatism” after admitting that the counteroffensive failed.
The presumable pressure that he was put under by the secret police in the aftermath of his interview with the Times of London, which arguably resulted in him retracting that particularly damning statement, probably also shaped his oddly worded denial of tensions between Zelensky and Zaluzhny. It thus appears that he felt forced to downplay their tensions, but he also wanted to signal to observers that he’s only doing so under duress and that the political-military rivalry in Kiev is very real right now.
By reading between the lines, observers can intuit important insight from Danilov’s latest interview. He already impressively changed his tune about the conflict as proven by his candid admission that the counteroffensive failed, but his parroting of slogans that he knows better than to believe strongly suggests that he’s signaling to others that everything is really as bad as they concluded. This observation hints that his outward loyalty to Zelensky isn’t sincere but is due to pressure from the secret police.
