Why Did Ukraine Just Dismiss Its Defense Minister?

I’ve spent the last several weeks highlighting the ways in which Ukraine has really changed the dynamic of the war against Russia. Thanks to improvements in drone warfare, Ukraine has created major economic disruption in Russia, cut off Crimea from the rest of Russia and brought the Russian advance to a crawl.

And a lot of that progress came under the direction of Ukraine’s 35-year-old Minister of Defense, Mykhailo Fedorov. Fedorov has been a government minister focused on technology before his current role so it made sense that his approach to defense would be one about using technology and fast innovations to combat Russia’s superior numbers. Yesterday, Fedorov was fired from his position. 

Ukraine’s minister of defense, the youthful face of the country’s successful drone warfare program, was ousted on Wednesday in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest shake-up of his government.

The departure of the minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, 35, for years the most prominent proponent of fighting with drones and robots, clouds the future of Ukraine’s innovation-centered strategy for confronting the much larger Russian Army. 

This decision isn’t sitting well with a fair number of people who don’t understand why, after all of the apparently success of Fedorov’s initiatives, he is being shown the door. There are actually protests in the streets over this decision.

Protestors in Kyiv chanting “Federov, Federov”
This isn’t just about one man’s job. It’s another battle in the war for 🇺🇦’s future, fought between the defenders/profiteers of the corrupt Soviet legacy vs. the new innovative, democratic technocratic Ukraine pic.twitter.com/YS7vTaaPMR

— Jessica Berlin (@berlin_bridge) July 16, 2026

More on the protests today.

At the protest in Kharkiv, Maria Chaplihina, 12, stood quietly with her grandfather, holding a sign that read “Bring Back Fedorov.” It was her first time protesting, Maria said. Most of her friends were home, she added, but she felt it was important to come out and make her feelings known.

Winning the war is the most important thing, she said, and Mr. Fedorov had been doing great work.

“Our president wants to overthrow him because he’s doing a good job,” she said. “People don’t like it, and neither do I.”…

“I really worry about what is happening now,” said Andriy Fedun, 54, a retired psychologist.

He said he previously supported Mr. Zelensky, admiring the president’s diplomacy in rallying the world to Ukraine’s side, but believed that firing a popular defense minister just as the war turned in Ukraine’s favor was a mistake.

“The Russians dream of our having internal problems,” he said. “Why remove him now?”

Fedorov posted a statement on X making the case for his own tenure. It’s lengthy, especially given that he’s only had the job for 6 months.

It has been a great honor to serve the Ukrainian people as the Minister of Defense.

Here is what our team managed to achieve:

1. Disabled Starlink access for Russian forces.

2. Took over a Ministry of Defense with zero budget, took a risk, reallocated funds from payroll from… pic.twitter.com/18B5QQaeqL

— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) July 15, 2026

Here is what our team managed to achieve:

1. Disabled Starlink access for Russian forces.

2. Took over a Ministry of Defense with zero budget, took a risk, reallocated funds from payroll from the end of the year, and effectively invested them in mid-strike capabilities, fiber-optic FPVs, low-cost reconnaissance, ground robotic platforms, interceptor drones, and deep-strike drones. 

3. Launched “Logistical Lockdown”, this cut off enemy logistics and initiated the isolation of Crimea.

4. Continued the funding program for the Drone Line.

5. Launched a support program for modern drone-assault units that rely primarily on advanced technologies in combat.

6. Introduced a 70% advance payment policy for procurements made via e-Points on the Brave1 Market portal.

7. Fundamentally overhauled the procurement system. 

8. Procured thousands of pickup trucks, buggies, and ATVs for the military for the first time—and did so through open tenders.

9. The drone interception rate rose from 83% to 91%, and the cruise missile interception rate soared from 47% to 87%.

10. Contracted Patriot PAC-2 GEM-T missiles for the first time, and submitted an application through an EU loan to purchase PAC-3 missiles.

11. Launched a baseline drone supply system for brigades and corps. 

12. Launched a massive grant program for manufacturers of explosives and missiles.

13. Initiated an unpopular but vital transformation of the military.

14. Conducted three UDCG meetings, where we successfully broke through the Russian information trap claiming our defeat, restoring partners’ faith in Ukraine. This secured $40 billion in support announced for this year (excluding the EU loan).

15. Launched the mechanism to utilize the EU loan for our military priorities.

16. Found a way to scale cheap missiles against jet-powered Shaheds and signed a record-breaking contract.

17. Our domestic ballistics. We radically revised the technical specifications, maximized accuracy, and reduced the cost by 30%. 

18. Signed a contract to procure Gripen fighter jets.

19. Collaborated with the military to plan and execute Operation Auchan, which halted the enemy’s mechanized offensive for six months.

20. Opened up exports under the Drone Deal program to attract investment and scale up domestic defense-industrial complex (OPK) production.

21. Launched the Trophy Lab, providing partners with the opportunity to study captured Russian military technologies.

22. Launched the Defense AI Center A1 to accelerate the integration of artificial intelligence on the battlefield.

Thank you to my entire team for their relentless 24/7 service. A special thank you to my family for their patience.

Thank you all for your support!

I will continue to work toward the mission I originally brought to the Ministry of Defense: defeating the enemy through asymmetry, the speed of innovation, and the power of organization.

To be continued.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Fedorov has turned around Ukraine’s fortunes in the war in a way that no one even imagined a year ago. So what is going on here? Apparently, this comes down to a battle between a young innovator and an older general, the commander and chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, who isn’t thrilled with some of the changes Fedorov has proposed.

At a news conference in Kyiv, the capital, Mr. Fedorov said that he had urged President Volodymyr Zelensky to remove his primary antagonist in the military hierarchy, Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander in chief, but that the president declined.

Mr. Fedorov, who clashed repeatedly with Mr. Syrskyi while championing a high-tech vision of warfare dominated by drones, accused the commander in chief of “blocking all of our initiatives.”

“Instead of figuring out how to defeat Russia asymmetrically,” Mr. Fedorov, 35, said, referring to the drone campaign, Mr. Syrskyi “figured out how to split the country.”…

Mr. Fedorov had also angered well-connected defense contractors with programs threatening their businesses, such as one that allowed soldiers to buy their own weapons on a military website.

Here’s a bit of what Fedorov had to say today.

“The people didn’t come out for Fedorov — they came out for themselves. This is about the root of the problem that needs to be solved,” ex-Defense Minister Fedorov about the protests in Kyiv.

“I do NOT need this position to be the defense minister. I need this position to WIN… pic.twitter.com/PVDFCPMsQM

— KyivPost (@KyivPost) July 16, 2026

We’ve seen this same sort of conflict play out here in the U.S. with upstart companies like Anduril eating the lunch of the big defense contractors thanks to innovation and technology. But obviously those arguments are a bit more significant when you’re fighting a four year long war for your own survival.

Finally, the really dark take on all of this is that Zelensky sided with Fedorov because he was a bit too young and too successful.

Serving as the face of the popular drone program also posed political risks, analysts said, in a system firmly dominated by Mr. Zelensky.

“Zelensky wants to be the only star,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, the head of the Penta Center for Political Studies, an independent think tank based in Kyiv. Mr. Fedorov also had support in the political opposition, which Mr. Zelensky likely saw as a threat, Mr. Fesenko said.

There may be some truth to that, but the main reason seems to be the obvious one. Entrenched interests don’t like to be disrupted.

Volodymyr Ariev, a member of Parliament in the opposition European Solidarity party, said he had intended to vote for Mr. Fedorov if he were renominated as defense minister. Mr. Fedorov, he said, had been sidelined by “corrupt guys who want to keep the profits on defense contracts.”…

The defense procurement reforms, however, made powerful enemies, said Mr. Fesenko, the political analyst. Brave1 and another site, DotChain, bypassed traditional procurement altogether. They allowed soldiers to pick out some of their own armaments and order them online, short-circuiting arms industry lobbying and backroom dealing.

One thing about war is that it means we’ll know very soon if this choice was as bad as it looks. The last six months have been the best six months Ukraine has had in the past three years. If the success begins to fall apart because of this decision we’ll probably see that change by the end of the year.

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