SerpApi.Org
For a young Mykhailo Drapatyi, the metre-high barricade blocking his armoured fighting vehicle from entering central Mariupol was no problem.
“Go!” Drapatyi, a battalion leader of the 72nd Mechanised Brigade, shouted at the driver of the BMP [Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty], who floored the accelerator and launched the 18-ton vehicle up and over the defences erected by pro-Russian separatists.
A column of armoured vehicles followed its path, punching past proxy fighters along one of Mariupol’s main avenues on a mission to rescue besieged police officers trapped by pro-Russian militants.
Footage of the event in 2014 only lasts a few seconds. Yet it has attained near-mythical status as one of the defining episodes of Ukraine’s early resistance, a flash of bold audacity in an army still cautious about provoking Russia.
Twelve years later, Major General Drapatyi has been appointed as the commander in chief of the armed forces of Ukraine. The 43-year-old married father-of-two will inherit the post from Oleksandr Syrsky, the ousted old-school leader who was dismissed on Monday night after protesters demanded his removal.
Kyiv has seen widespread protests for nearly a week after Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, dismissed Mykhailo Fedorov, his highly popular defence minister. Mr Fedorov firmly believes Ukraine can only win with new, asymmetric strategies and tactics. Major General Syrsky believes that is all very well, but that the traditional military knows how best to do military operations.
Mr Zelensky first removed Mr Fedorov, but has now bowed to public pressure and removed Gen Syrsky too.
Last week, in a rare public post, Maj Gen Drapatyi made his move. He said the Ukrainian army needed changes and new rules. “I believe in the Ukrainian armed forces, which are capable of learning, developing technology, protecting people and allowing commanders to take responsibility for the outcome,” he said on Facebook, effectively backing Mr Fedorov.
Popular among the military, officials and civilians alike, the veteran soldier celebrates the highest public trust score of any army commander.
Much like Mr Fedorov, he had pushed for sweeping army reforms to improve conditions for troops and criticised the stodgy Soviet command culture many associated with Gen Syrsky.
“A commander has no right to remain silent about problems, especially when their cost is measured in lost opportunities, time, and human lives,” he wrote in the Facebook post, straying from the government line.
“Silence does not protect the army; it only allows mistakes to accumulate until they become much more difficult to correct,” he added.
Born in Kamianets-Podilskyi, in western Ukraine’s Khmelnytskyi region, Maj Gen Drapatyi was trained as a tank officer and accumulated 26 years of army experience.
After the full-scale invasion in 2022, he built a reputation as the trusted commander sent in to manage some of Ukraine’s most desperate battles.
He helped to stall the Russian advance on Kryvyi Rih, Mr Zelensky’s home city, and was one of the commanders of the counter-offensive that liberated Kherson, the only regional capital captured by Moscow’s forces during the full-scale war.
He also halted the Russian incursion near Kharkiv in the summer of 2024, soon after being appointed the youngest-ever commander of the Ukrainian land forces, one of the most senior positions in the military.
But his tenure was short. When Russia struck an army training centre in June 2025, killing at least 12 and wounding dozens of Ukrainian soldiers, Maj Gen Drapatyi resigned, saying he felt personally responsible for the tragedy.
“An army in which commanders bear personal responsibility for people’s lives is a living force,” he said at the time. “An army in which no one is held accountable for casualties is dying from within.”
His resignation then surprised many in Ukraine.
But his words are likely to strike a chord with the many Ukrainians who have demanded greater accountability and transparency within the military’s command ranks.
Shortly after, he was appointed to the lesser but more combat-focused role of joint forces commander.
Maj Gen Drapatyi’s predecessor Gen Syrsky had come to embody an austere, Soviet-style command culture criticised by detractors as overly ready to incur heavy losses of life in pursuit of strategic gains.
The four-star general’s patronage of the Skelia assault unit, which was the focus of an explosive investigation which revealed at least 25 non-combat deaths, as well as his overseeing the “Bakhmut meat grinder”, the bloodiest battle of the invasion, only deepened this perception.
Yet Maj Gen Drapatyi, who had received three reprimands from Gen Syrsky, has long been one of the loudest voices calling for an overhaul.
As ground forces commander, he identified many of the same issues as Mr Fedorov: “An atmosphere of fear, lack of initiative, being closed off to feedback, indifference to personnel problems, facade discipline and a deep gap between headquarters and units”.
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He has also won a reputation for innovation and fully embraced the drone wave, personally championing the “drone line” initiative to create a unified technological “kill zone” along the front line using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
At 43 years old, he is around the average age for a Ukrainian soldier, with the tried-and-tested military track record that Mr Fedorov lacks, yet – unlike Gen Syrsky – forged in the crucible of an army that was beginning to liberate itself from its Soviet legacy.
Maj Gen Drapatyi takes charge of the armed forces at a crucial period, with Ukraine’s campaign of long-range strikes extending the war deep into Russian territory.
On Wednesday morning, Ukrainian drones hit warehouses belonging to Wildberries, the Russian e-commerce giant often described as the country’s equivalent of Amazon, for the second time in four days.
Logistics hubs belonging to Wildberries were set ablaze in Krasnodar and Stavropol overnight, the company’s owner said.
Mr Zelensky said his forces had targeted “logistics hubs involved in supplying the Russian army with drone components, navigation equipment and other gear”.
The repeated strikes on a company at the heart of Russia’s consumer economy is being read as a shift in Kyiv’s strategy.
Wildberries has over a million sellers and tens of millions of customers. Some have posted videos online saying they have lost their entire business inventories in the strikes.
The attacks, which are already believed to have taken out between 10 and 15 per cent of Wildberries’ warehouse space, could cause disruption across the country and pressure the Kremlin to answer to its citizens.
“We are, quite justly, bringing the war back home – to Russia,” Mr Zelensky said on Wednesday.
