I have to dive pretty deep into the weeds on this one so let’s start with a short summary of what this is all about and then we’ll go from there.
Last week, President Zelensky fired his defense minister, a man named Mykhailo Fedorov. That decision shocked a lot of people because Fedorov has basically been responsible for backing the drone approach to warfare that arguably has turned around the entire war over the past six months, putting Putin and Russia on the back foot.
Fedorov was so popular that Ukrainian citizens came out and protested his firing by holding street rallies. And those protests didn’t happen just once but continued every day since then. They demanded Fedorov be re-hired and that the top general who Zelensky had essentially sided with over Fedorov be fired. Today, the protesters got part of what they wanted.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine removed his top general on Tuesday amid swelling public protests and growing concerns that the national unity that had helped the country survive nearly five years of war was in danger of fracturing.
The dismissal of Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi was a major reversal for Mr. Zelensky, who just days earlier sided with the general and fired Ukraine’s defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov.
Thousands of people had joined mass demonstrations to pressure Mr. Zelensky to change course and reaffirm Mr. Fedorov’s vision of warfare as increasingly dominated by drones and robots. As he championed a military overhaul that leaned into high-tech innovation, Mr. Fedorov, 35, emerged as a symbol of hope to many Ukrainians, particularly young people…
Mr. Zelensky said that he had been forced to choose between the two men as the differences between their camps had become impossible to resolve.
So Gen. Syrskyi is out and he’s being replaced by someone who was a Fedorov ally and the person Fedorov himself wanted to have the job.
Zelensky appointed Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces, to replace Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, who had led the military since February 2024, winning a reputation as a loyalist to the president in an old-school Soviet style of command.
Syrsky’s repeated clashes over strategy with the younger defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who had worked to modernize the armed forces, exposed a bitter generational divide among top leaders just as Ukraine’s armed forces appeared to be gaining advantage against Russia…
As protests spread in support of Fedorov, Drapatyi backed the ousted defense minister.
So what about Fedorov? There was no announcement today about his return. But that’s apparently not for lack of trying on Zelensky’s part. Fedorov was offered some alternative positions in the government but he’s apparently holding out for his old job.
Zelenskyy spent the past four days in meetings with military commanders and political advisers as he sought to find a way through the crisis.
The Ukrainian president had offered Fedorov a senior role within Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council with direct access to the president and a mandate to oversee defence innovation and military reform, according to people familiar with the situation.
Under the arrangement offered, Fedorov would have overseen defence technology programmes and efforts to scale production of long-range weapons, the people said, allowing him to continue pushing reforms outside the defence ministry and military command. He would also have worked to attract foreign investment into Ukraine’s defence industry…
The president met Fedorov for roughly six hours over the weekend and has been in contact with him almost daily since his sacking on Thursday, according to people briefed on the matter. Zelenskyy offered Fedorov several alternative positions to his past defence minister role, but he has declined them, those people said.
“He has a lot of leverage right now,” said a person familiar with the discussions between Fedorov and Zelenskyy. “He wants one thing: to be restored [as minister of defence]. And he knows he has most of society on his side.”
So the top general who clashed with Fedorov is gone and his replacement is an ally. And Zelensky is trying to offer Fedorov something to keep him on his side, but it sounds like he’s not offering a complete reversal. Maybe he doesn’t want to admit he got this backwards.
Meanwhile, Gen. Syrskyi offered an apology to Fedorov.
Syrsky responded Monday with a public apology to Fedorov. It was a “surprise” to him, he wrote in the news publication Militarnyi, to learn there was a conflict between them.
“I viewed our relationship as a professional one: one involving complex issues and differing positions,” he wrote. “That is how it should be between two institutions during a major war.”
“If I have offended anyone in any way: Mykhailo Albertovych, please forgive me. I can be harsh at times. But I ask you, and everyone who is now following this story with such interest: let’s focus not on the personal, but on the bigger picture. On victory.”
For his part, Fedorov was clearly annoyed with Syrskyi but also credited him for saving the country.
“Syrsky isn’t willing to discuss the problems face-to-face,” Fedorov, previously Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation, told reporters last week. “Syrsky saved our country in 2022. … He led the Kyiv operation … led the Kharkiv operation. … We cannot underestimate a commander like that.
“But the war has changed completely. Drone architecture evolves, or new features appear in drones at least four times a year,” Fedorov said. “The command-and-control system has changed, and we must change as well. We can’t keep relying on what worked back then.”
That’s fundamentally what’s at stake here. It’s the old way of doing things vs. the new way. Right now, over the past six months, the new way is winning the war. Getting rid of Fedorov was a mistake. Zelensky should give the man his job back ASAP. Holding out based on personal or political concerns would be more than a mistake, it would be a betrayal.
Here’s a BBC report on the developments.
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