Zelensky sacks Ukraine’s top army commander after days of protests

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has sacked the country’s army commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi.

His dismissal comes just days after the removal of popular Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov – a move that triggered street protests across the country.

Initial rumours that the end of Fedorov’s tenure was related to a conflict between him and Syrskyi were soon confirmed.

Fedorov, 35, has been widely praised for energising the ministry and transforming the armed forces, as well as leading a drive against corruption.

Syrskyi, 60, is seen by many in Ukraine as a Soviet-school commander reluctant to implement radical changes in the army.

He was replaced by Mykhailo Drapatyi, who is a popular, battle-hardened general.

In a video post on social media late on Tuesday, Zelensky thanked Syrskyi for his military campaigns, including his role in successfully defending the capital Kyiv during the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Zelensky also revealed that earlier in the day, he met Fedorov and offered him a “worthy position in power”, but did not say whether the offer had been accepted.

Fedorov was last week replaced by Yevhenii Khmara, a former top official at Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU).

“All decisions will be formalised tomorrow,” Zelensky added in his post.

Meanwhile, Fedorov congratulated Drapatyi with his new job, describing his appointment as a “new hope in the fight of free people for freedom and justice”.

He said it was “the voice of change that could not be ignored”.

Fedorov also revealed that he had called Syrskyi to thank him for the defence of the Kyiv region and other “historic battles”.

“But we need to move even faster and write new chapters correcting all previous mistakes,” he added.

Fedorov, 35, had been appointed defence minister only in January – but has been widely praised for using data to analyse and try to improve performance on the front line.

A former minister of digital transformation, he was active from the early days of the full-scale invasion by setting up a volunteer “IT Army of Ukraine” to launch cyber-attacks against Russia.

Later, he led a successful fundraising campaign called the Army of Drones and brought in elements of “gamification” to the war, designing a system that awarded Ukrainian military units with credits for hitting Russian assets.

Syrskyi has so far not publicly commented on the latest developments.

On Monday, he wrote an op-ed for the Militarny website, saying of his relationship with Fedorov: “I perceived our relationship as a working one”.

“If I offended anyone, Mykhailo Albertovych [Fedorov], I’m sorry.”

On the protests that have been held in several Ukrainian cities, the general wrote that the issues of military contracts, procurement and mobilisation currently being aired in the press and boiled down to pithy slogans by protesters were a great deal more complicated than most people realised.

“Decisions on which people’s lives depend are not made with slogans,” he said. “Real work, not the public drama surrounding it, wins the war,” Syrskyi wrote.