Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired armed forces commander Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi on Tuesday and named Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi to replace him, bowing to six days of street protests that had demanded the general’s removal.
It was the second time in roughly a year that street pressure has forced Zelenskyy to reverse course. Protests last summer compelled him to undo a law that had weakened Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdogs; this time, demonstrators in Kyiv and other cities nationwide turned out for six consecutive days after Zelenskyy dismissed Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov the previous week, with crowds carrying portraits of Syrskyi demanding his ouster alongside calls for Fedorov’s reinstatement. Protesters viewed Fedorov as a driver of military modernization and Syrskyi, a four-star general, as an embodiment of the army’s older, Soviet-style command culture. Fedorov had publicly accused Syrskyi of blocking his push for drone innovation and technology-driven reform, arguing the general needed to be replaced for Ukraine to avoid losing the war.
Zelenskyy said he reached the decision after a series of meetings with military commanders in which it was determined how to reorganize the structure of Ukraine’s General Staff. He thanked Syrskyi for defending Kyiv and for operations in Kharkiv and Kursk, and framed the leadership change as an effort to reset friction inside the military command. “Our shared wish is one: victory over the enemy and pressure on Russia that would force Russia toward peace,” Zelenskyy said in a statement on social media.
Zelenskyy met separately with Fedorov on Tuesday and offered him what he described as a respected government position meant to unify Ukraine’s technology sector; it was not clear whether Fedorov accepted, according to the Associated Press. Fedorov congratulated Drapatyi’s appointment on social media, calling it “new hope in the fight of free people for freedom and justice” and arguing that Ukrainians’ expectations must now be met with a clear strategy to end the war, protect soldiers’ lives and expand the country’s use of robotic and asymmetric warfare against Russia. He had served as defense minister for about six months before his dismissal.
Drapatyi, regarded within the military as a disciplined and effective officer, is credited with helping stop Russian advances during the initial 2014 invasion of eastern Ukraine and, after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, with commanding forces that halted a Russian push toward Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih and helped drive Russian troops back from parts of the Kherson region. He later organized the defense that blunted a renewed Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region. Zelenskyy named him ground forces commander later in 2024, a post Drapatyi resigned from in 2025 after a Russian strike on a training center killed several Ukrainian troops. Drapatyi had backed Fedorov’s push for reform publicly, writing on Facebook last week that “the military needs change, but without justice, no change will make sense.”
It remains unclear whether Tuesday’s changes will satisfy the protesters, who have been demanding accountability and a more effective military strategy amid rising Ukrainian casualties.
Danielle Bell, head of the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that her team documented 1,396 civilians killed and 7,978 wounded across Ukraine in the first six months of 2026, a 37% increase over the same period last year and nearly double the toll recorded in all of 2024.
Both Russia and Ukraine have intensified strikes on each other’s infrastructure in recent months as U.S.-led talks on ending the war remain stalled, with Washington’s attention largely absorbed by its separate conflict with Iran. Russia has relied heavily on ballistic missiles in its strikes, while Ukraine is currently short of the Patriot interceptor munitions needed to counter them. Ukraine has responded by intensifying its own strikes on Russian oil infrastructure, including drone attacks on Russian warehouses and depots last weekend that killed multiple workers and injured dozens more, part of a broader pattern of tit-for-tat strikes that has continued even as diplomatic efforts to end the war have stalled.
Zelenskyy said Drapatyi and Ukraine’s other senior commanders must now present an updated defense strategy, including continued reform of the military’s corps structure and faster delivery of weapons to front-line units, though he did not set a deadline for when that strategy would be presented.
