Zelensky ousts Ukraine's military commander as major shake-up continues

KYIV — President Volodymyr Zelensky ousted the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces on Tuesday, days after abruptly dismissing the country’s defense minister, who won praise as the architect of Ukraine’s increasingly successful long-range drone assaults on Russia.

Zelensky appointed Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, to replace Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, who had led the military since February 2024, winning a reputation as a loyalist to the president in an old-school Soviet style of command.

“We all share the same desire — to defeat the enemy and create conditions on the front lines and through pressure on Russia that would force Russia to make peace,” Zelensky said in a statement announcing the change in Ukraine’s wartime leadership. “Tomorrow we will formalize all decisions.”

Syrsky’s dismissal comes amid days of political turmoil in Ukraine, following Zelensky’s sacking last week of popular defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

Zelensky said communications between Fedorov and Syrsky had broken down and appeared to side with the general in dismissing the defense minister, who had served in the role for only six months.

The shake-up has exposed a bitter generational divide among top leaders just as Ukraine’s armed forces appeared to be gaining battlefield advantages against Russia.

The defense minister’s firing sparked widespread protests in Kyiv and other cities. Demonstrators said they feared the move could undermine Ukraine’s war effort and called for his reinstatement.

Zelensky met over the weekend with several senior officers considered contenders to command the military, including Brig. Gen. Oleh Apostol, commander of the Air Assault Forces; Maj. Gen. Volodymyr Horbatiuk, deputy chief of the General Staff; and Drapatyi.

Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, called for calm. “The situation is being resolved professionally, constructively, and in the best interests of our state,” he wrote Monday on social media. “Debate is a normal thing in a free country. What matters is that it continues peacefully, without provocations that could undermine our national security.”

As protests spread in support of Fedorov, Drapatyi backed the ousted defense minister.

“The military needs change, but without justice, no change will make sense to the people who carry this war on their shoulders every day,” Drapatyi wrote in a Facebook post the day after Fedorov’s dismissal.

Zelensky had come under increasing pressure from lawmakers and protesters in recent days to oust Syrsky.

After Fedorov was fired Wednesday, he accused Syrsky of blocking his initiatives to streamline and modernize Ukraine’s armed forces, saying he was stuck in outmoded battlefield tactics instead of innovating to defeat Russia.

“Syrsky isn’t willing to discuss the problems face-to-face,” Fedorov, previously Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation, told reporters last week. “Syrsky saved our country in 2022. … He led the Kyiv operation … led the Kharkiv operation. … We cannot underestimate a commander like that.

“But the war has changed completely. Drone architecture evolves, or new features appear in drones at least four times a year,” Fedorov said. “The command-and-control system has changed, and we must change as well. We can’t keep relying on what worked back then.”

Syrsky responded Monday with a public apology to Fedorov. It was a “surprise” to him, he wrote in the news publication Militarnyi, to learn there was a conflict between them.

“I viewed our relationship as a professional one: one involving complex issues and differing positions,” he wrote. “That is how it should be between two institutions during a major war.”

“If I have offended anyone in any way: Mykhailo Albertovych, please forgive me. I can be harsh at times. But I ask you, and everyone who is now following this story with such interest: let’s focus not on the personal, but on the bigger picture. On victory.”

It remains unclear if Fedorov will return to an official position. Zelensky named Yevhen Khmara as acting defense minister and said he would ask parliament to approve him at a later date. Khmara previously served as acting head of the country’s security services.

On Tuesday, Zelensky said that he met with Fedorov and offered him “a worthy leadership position that would allow him to bring together our country’s technological capabilities and ensure their continued development.”

Fedorov, however, did not indicate whether he would accept. In a statement Tuesday, he called Drapatyi’s appointment “a new wind and a new hope in the struggle of free people for freedom and justice,” but made no mention an offer from Zelensky.

“We need to move faster and write new chapters, correcting all previous mistakes,” Fedorov said.

Belton reported from London and Yang from Washington.