SerpApi.Org
In the early days following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskiy emerged as one of the war’s main players. He organized the defense of Kyiv as Russian forces surged across the border in February 2022, then planned the counteroffensive that helped Ukraine regain swaths of territory in the east.
After President Volodymyr Zelensky made him commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces two years later, Syrskiy mapped out the first land invasion of Russia since World War II, drawing off Moscow’s resources from the front lines to defend its exposed belly.
Now Zelensky is facing a wave of protests to remove Syrskiy after the president sided with the 60-year-old general in a dispute with the country’s charismatic young defense minister.
Thousands took to the streets in Kyiv and other cities after Zelensky fired 35-year-old Mykhailo Fedorov last week. Many hailed Fedorov as a tech-savvy innovator who helped Ukraine gain an edge on the battlefield by disabling Starlink access for Russian forces and betting on an expanded drone campaign to cut Moscow’s logistics lines.
Fedorov called a news conference after he was fired where he said Syrskiy had failed to form a strategic vision for the war effort and impeded structural reforms to strengthen the military. As the two faced off, Fedorov said, Syrskiy offered Zelensky an ultimatum: Either he or Fedorov would have to go.
Syrskiy on Monday said he was surprised to hear Fedorov’s account, posting a lengthy rebuttal where he defended his record. “I’m not at war with the ministry. I’m at war with Russia,” Syrskiy wrote. “In the army, you don’t get to choose who you serve with. In the army, you follow orders and do your job.”
Analysts say that Zelensky, navigating a culture clash between the two men, simply chose the path which protected the existing power balance within the military. It is easier to replace a defense minister than an armed-forces chief during the middle of a war; Ukraine has now had five of them since the full-scale invasion, including the new acting defense minister, Yevhen Khmara.
The aftermath of Fedorov’s departure, however, suggests that Zelensky doesn’t only have the future of the armed forces to worry about, but also public opinion.
“We’ll soon reach a point—as a nation—where every position like that of commander in chief or, for example, any other high-level government post, will be decided by a rally with placards,” said Oleksandr Fediyenko, a member of the national security committee in the Ukrainian parliament. “That’s a road to nowhere.”
The old guard isn’t content to be swept away just yet.
Analysts have called Syrskiy a micromanager who prefers top-down decision-making to the horizontal structures promoted by today’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization militaries. He has faced criticism for the heavy loss of life incurred in the Battle of Bakhmut, which drew comparisons with trench warfare in World War I as Ukrainian troops fought for months to defend a town that many commentators considered to have little strategic value.
But people following the situation also say claims that Syrskiy doesn’t have what it takes to run an increasingly technological war are overblown.
Syrskiy’s Soviet-era military education instilled an understanding of ever-changing tactics, according to Mykola Bielieskov, a senior fellow at Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies.
“The main problem is institutional,” he said. “The main problem is that for 20 years we’ve been trying to adopt the NATO model instead of the Soviet one, but we still haven’t resolved the conflict between the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff.”
In recent days, the heads of Ukraine’s navy, air assault and territorial defense forces have all come out in support of Syrskiy. Air Assault Forces Commander Oleh Apostol wrote on Facebook that protests and chaos would only strengthen Russia.
“It is particularly disheartening to hear categorical judgments from people who have never issued combat orders, never taken responsibility for the lives and health of their subordinates, and never made decisions on which the fate of a unit depends,” Apostol posted before meeting on Monday with Zelensky to discuss the course of the war.
A perception is growing, however, that while Syrskiy’s methods might have served Ukraine well at various points in the war, its biggest successes lately have turned on how it is now able to strike ever deeper into Russia, triggering a fuel crisis and burnishing Fedorov’s reputation for his moves to invest heavily in drones.
Write to Anastasiia Malenko at [email protected]