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President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 21 dismissed the Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi.
The move comes amid ongoing mass protests in Kyiv and across Ukraine, in which demonstrators have demanded that Syrskyi be removed from his post.
Public anger at Syrskyi erupted after Zelensky ousted popular reformist Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov last week.
Fedorov said during a press conference the day after his ouster that Syrskyi had issued an ultimatum to Zelensky.
Ukrainians have held daily protests since July 16, opposing the removal of Fedorov, one of the country's youngest and most popular senior officials. One of the protest's organizers, veteran Dmytro Koziatynskyi, told the Kyiv Independent on July 20 the movement now had two clear demands: reinstating Fedorov as defense minister and removing Syrskyi as commander-in-chief.
Tensions between the two had been expected since Fedorov's appointment and reflected different approaches to military leadership and organizational culture.
Syrskyi has favored a highly centralized command structure rooted in Soviet military doctrine. He has faced criticism from soldiers and analysts for micromanagement and for fostering what critics describe as a Soviet-style command culture.
Zelensky's latest decisions have drawn criticism from lawmakers, veterans, and members of the public, many of whom have argued that removing Fedorov risks undermining reforms at the Defense Ministry while leaving concerns about military leadership.
Oleksandr Syrskyi
Syrskyi was born in the tiny Russian village of Novinki, Vladimir Oblast, in 1965. Syrskyi's father served in the Soviet Army and was transferred to Kharkiv, in the then-Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, when Syrskyi was 15.
He graduated from high school in Kharkiv and then enrolled in the Moscow Higher Military Command School, which was then the Soviet Union's most prestigious military academy.
He graduated in 1986 and joined the Soviet Artillery Corps, serving in a number of theaters, including Afghanistan.
When the USSR was dissolved in 1991 and the Soviet military was divided between various successor states, Syrskyi's unit in Chuhuiv, Kharkiv Oblast, fell under Ukrainian command. As part of this transition process, he took an oath of allegiance to the newly independent Ukrainian state.
Syrskyi rose through the ranks of the Ukrainian military. At the beginning of Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014, he was chief of staff of what was then known as the "anti-terror operation", or "ATO", and was one of the main commanders of Ukrainian forces during the Battle for Debaltseve in the winter of 2015, which ended in a chaotic and disorderly Ukrainian retreat.
His career continued to progress and by August 2020 he had achieved the rank of lieutenant general and held the position of commander of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Syrskyi played a key role in the defense of Kyiv and commanded Ukrainian forces during the successful Kharkiv counteroffensive in 2022.
In 2023 Syrskyi commanded Ukrainian soldiers during the Battle of Bakhmut, choosing to fight a heavily attritional, meat grinder style defensive battle which Ukraine ultimately lost. This led to him gaining a derisive nickname amongst Ukrainian troops — "the butcher."
His reputation and unpopularity among large sections of the military made him a controversial choice to replace the widely popular Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi on Feb. 8, 2024.
As commander-in-chief, his inflexible and rigid command style continued. In several cases Ukrainian military units resorted to disobeying his orders to avoid military catastrophe, most notably during the battle of Avdiivka.
Ukrainian forces holding the embattled city withdrew in the face of Russian encirclement, reportedly without Syrskyi's consent, saving thousands of Ukrainian soldiers from death or captivity. Syrskyi announced a formal withdrawal a day later.
One of Syrskyi's biggest reforms to the Ukrainian military during his tenure as commander-in-chief was his creation of the "Assault Forces," a separate arm of the ground forces that were effectively under his personal control.
This new arm of the military benefited from receiving the majority of mobilized soldiers — up to 1,000 a month in some cases — whilst regular mechanized brigades received far fewer.
The assault forces — and particularly Syrsky's favoured 425th Assault Regiment, "Skala," — gained a reputation for the brutal treatment of mobilized soldiers and unsophisticated brute force assaults, which frequently resulted in heavily Ukrainian casualties.
Read also: Analysis: Why many Ukrainians feel Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi must go
