Zaluzhnyi: The West's old security guarantees are today's version of bright red trousers
Ukraine's former commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi says the war has fallen into the hands of profit-seeking dealmakers, and compared the West's outdated security guarantees to the bright red trousers that made soldiers easy targets a century ago. He warns that a historically failed approach is being repeated today.
Ukraine's former commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, has offered a pointed assessment of how the war in Ukraine is being handled and how the West currently approaches security guarantees.
Zaluzhnyi said the war has effectively been surrendered to marketers and wheeler-dealers who are more interested in chasing quick profit than in confronting the reality of the battlefield.
A historical parallel
To illustrate his point about outdated and dangerous thinking, the former commander drew a comparison to World War I, when soldiers' bright red trousers — part of a traditional and once-impressive military uniform — turned them into easy targets for enemy rifles and artillery. That choice proved a fatal miscalculation, as the ceremonial uniform failed to account for the realities of industrialized, modern warfare.
Zaluzhnyi argued that the West is making a comparable mistake today with its security guarantees, which he described as outdated and disconnected from the nature of modern warfare and current threats — just as the red trousers of a century ago were unsuited to the battlefields of the early 20th century.
Context
Zaluzhnyi served as commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces during the early stages of the war with Russia and is regarded as one of the country's most influential military figures. His remarks feed into a broader debate over whether the international security mechanisms the West is using to respond to Russian aggression against Ukraine remain fit for purpose.
