Zelenskiy dismisses Ukrainian commander-in-chief
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has dismissed Oleksandr Syrskyi as commander-in-chief after days of protests, replacing him with Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi, he announced on social media.
Zelenskiy had initially stood by his commander-in-chief, who has been in post since 2024, despite the criticism he received after he dismissed the popular politician Mykhailo Fedorov as defence minister the previous week.
Fedorov, who is only 35, subsequently made his conflict with Syrskyi – who was trained during the Soviet era – public.
The dispute centred primarily on a disagreement over the direction of the war effort.
Fedorov was closely associated with Ukraine’s drone strikes against Russian territory.
Zelenskiy explicitly thanked the outgoing general and paid tribute to his military service.
Faced with ongoing protests over Fedorov’s dismissal, the president said on platform X that he had spent days in talks with military figures.
As early as Saturday, in his daily video address, Zelenskiy had said he was listening to what people were saying in response to the street protests.
He said he had also spoken at length with both Fedorov and Syrskyi.
On Tuesday evening, according to Zelenskiy’s spokesman Dmytro Lytvyn, a further conversation with Fedorov took place.
Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that he had offered Fedorov a “decent post” to oversee the technological component of the state.
For six consecutive days, several thousand people – most of them young – demonstrated in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and other cities against Fedorov’s dismissal, demanding his reinstatement.
Their main demand, however, was the removal of army chief Syrskyi.
At the same time, there was also open support for Syrskyi from within the military.
with Reuters
DPA