What did Zaluzhnyi and Milley's first meeting signal?

What did it mean when Ukraine's military chief met his closest American counterpart face to face? On 18 January 2023, the meeting held a day earlier was the main security story: Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, met in person for the first time on 17 January 2023.

The encounter belonged to the wider international response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and in particular to the relationship between Kyiv and Washington. Until then, the two senior officers had not met personally. The meeting placed the commanders of the two militaries in direct contact at a stage when the war was in its eleventh month.

A change in Berlin

Another development shaped the security debate in the preceding days. On 16 January 2023, German Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht resigned from the Scholz cabinet amid criticism of her response to the war in Ukraine. Her departure meant that one of Ukraine's European partners was changing the head of its defence ministry at the same moment Kyiv and Washington were deepening their military contacts.

The two events were separate, and nothing reported at the time linked them. Together, they show how the military and political management of support for Ukraine was being reshaped in mid-January 2023: through direct contact between senior commanders in one case, and through a ministerial resignation under criticism in the other.