KYIV – Mykhailo Fedorov had already been told he was out. When Zelenskyy’s office called him in for a meeting last week, Fedorov arrived expecting to negotiate a role as presidential adviser. He left without one.
That detail, which Fedorov disclosed at a press conference on Thursday, has become the focal point of the most turbulent week in Ukrainian civil-military relations since the war began. For a second consecutive day on Friday, crowds gathered outside the Bankova – Ukraine’s presidential administration – in Kyiv, with similar gatherings reported in Lviv and Dnipro, chanting slogans demanding the removal of General Oleksandr Syrskyi as commander-in-chief. The Financial Times reported that President Zelenskyy is now weighing that step.
Fedorov’s public statement crystallized what his supporters had been saying in private for weeks. He accused Syrskyi of “splitting the country” by undercutting reforms Fedorov had championed during six months as defense minister – reforms centered on decentralizing battlefield decision-making. He told journalists he was offered no further role in government after the dismissal and chose to speak publicly rather than leave quietly.
His tenure produced concrete changes. Fedorov pushed through a procurement overhaul that shifted some purchasing authority to brigade-level commanders, reduced the approval chain for drone acquisitions, and accelerated deliveries of domestically produced first-person-view systems. Defense officials who worked closely with him said those systems played a measurable role in slowing Russian advances in the Zaporizhzhia direction during the spring. That record is what his backers now invoke when they argue the firing was a strategic error.
The friction ran deeper than procurement. Fedorov had pressed for what he described as “mission command” – the doctrine, common in NATO armies, under which frontline officers set objectives and leave execution to subordinates. Syrskyi operates differently. He is known for calling colonels directly, sometimes bypassing divisional and brigade commanders to issue tactical instructions, a style that critics inside the army say has created confusion at the level where the fighting actually happens. A combat medic evacuated from the Kherson direction this week, speaking to Al Jazeera without giving her name, described receiving contradictory orders from two different headquarters within an hour. She said the problem was “coming from the top.”
Syrskyi’s record is not straightforwardly negative. He commanded the defense of Kyiv in the critical early weeks of the Russian operation in 2022, and he led the Kharkiv counteroffensive that autumn that recaptured large portions of territory Moscow had seized. He was promoted to commander-in-chief in February 2024. Tensions between Syrskyi and American military planners over battlefield strategy predate the current crisis by years. His defenders argue that a grinding war of attrition along a roughly 1,000-kilometer front does not reward the kind of decentralized risk-taking Fedorov preferred.
Zelenskyy, speaking to reporters on Thursday, declined to address whether Syrskyi’s position was under review. He described the changes in the defense ministry as an effort to “build a team that can work together,” a formulation that offered little clarity on what comes next. His office did not respond to questions about the FT’s Friday report.
The protests outside the Bankova are unusual enough to warrant attention on their own terms. Ukraine’s wartime political culture has largely suppressed public demonstrations – partly through informal pressure and partly through the logic of national emergency that made dissent feel like a gift to Moscow. The people gathered on Friday were not anti-war demonstrators; by most accounts they were pro-war, pro-Western Ukrainians who believed Syrskyi’s command style was costing lives. A demonstrator who gave her name only as Nina told Al Jazeera that she had a son serving on the eastern front and had come because “we are not against Zelenskyy, we are against a system that does not listen to the soldiers.”
The reshuffle touched more than the defense ministry. Three deputy ministers were replaced, two senior procurement officials departed, and the head of a drone production coordination body was removed. Questions about accountability inside Ukraine’s wartime defense establishment have shadowed the government for months; some analysts see the scope of the changes as an effort to contain that narrative before any ceasefire talks become a possibility.
Allied governments in Europe and Washington have monitored the week’s events without publicly commenting on Syrskyi. NATO has longstanding relationships with Ukrainian military officials installed under his leadership, including commanders who participated in planning sessions at alliance headquarters in Brussels this spring. The concern in those capitals, according to a Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity, is less about who holds the top job than about continuity of information-sharing at a moment when the front lines have stabilized in ways that require careful management.
Presidential adviser Dmytro Lytvyn offered the official line when asked Friday whether the FT report was accurate: “Personnel decisions are made by the president in accordance with his constitutional authority.” He said no further announcement was expected before the weekend.
Fedorov had his own closing line. At the end of his Thursday press conference, when asked whether Ukraine could win the war with Syrskyi in place, he said he did not know the answer to that question. He said he wished he did.
