Amid street protests and divisions within the army, Zelensky attempts to strike a balance

Protesters are still on the streets of Ukraine, calling for Mykhailo Fedorov to return to the Ministry of Defence, but the decision has been made: Parliament is in recess and Fedorov, having turned down the role of adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky and the post of Prime Minister, has assured everyone that he will play his part in Ukraine’s defence; he will not disappear, but he will no longer be a minister. It was the first sign of calm in a government in turmoil. Complaints from civil society continue to pour in; within the military, some side with the Chief of the Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, whilst others side with Fedorov – and the two did not see eye to eye. The former minister, whom a source close to him describes as very ambitious, reacted impulsively when he saw that the president, in an effort to end the long period of broken communication between the army and the Ministry of Defence, had decided to sack him without appeal. After the storm, it is now time to restore order. The divisions within the Ukrainian army remain very much in place; they are particularly acute in a country that clings to unity as its main weapon against the enemy. They do Ukraine no favours, but whilst the ‘Fedorov revolution’ is indeed linked to his name, it is not driven solely by his presence within the Ministry of Defence. 

Most Ukrainian military analysts continue to argue that, between the former minister and Syrsky, it would have been necessary to get rid of the latter – too old for modern warfare, too Soviet-minded to represent a Ukraine fighting against its past, and too reticent for the communicative power that Kyiv meticulously cultivates. Perhaps the time will come to remove Syrsky as well in order to heal the rifts, and yesterday speculation grew following Zelensky’s meeting with Commander Andrii Biletsky; yet the prevailing view in most military circles, among those actually fighting the war and who had pinned great hopes on Fedorov, is that if Ukraine were tied to the successes of a single man, it would have lost the war long ago. Perhaps the time has come to tone down the rhetoric and lower the stakes, because after months of bad news, Russia greeted the former minister’s resignation with an ironic remark: "the clever one" has been taken out of the picture. And this sense of satisfaction is a very bad sign for Kyiv.

Russian enthusiasm, however, was short-lived. For some time now, the ‘voenkory’ – the Russian term for military bloggers who often follow soldiers to the front line and take a line that does not always align with that of the Kremlin – have been writing that things are going badly on the battlefield and are certainly no better on Russian soil; they complain about decisions taken by the Russian Ministry of Defence and the lack of more radical solutions; they frequently expose the shortcomings that the Kremlin conceals, such as the lack of air defence in Russian cities hit by Ukrainian drones. Following Fedorov’s resignation, the voenkory rejoiced, as did Komsomolskaya Pravda, a propaganda newspaper that praises “the Maidan of cartoons”, published articles expressing great satisfaction; yet shortly afterwards, yesterday, comments of a different nature appeared – not one of jubilation, but accusatory portraits of the new acting Defence Minister whom Zelensky has appointed in the interim: Yevhenii Khmara. Not a civilian – as the Minister of Defence should be, according to the Ukrainian Constitution – but one of the country’s most highly regarded generals, described by Ukrainians as a hero and by Russians as a murderer. Until Thursday, Khmara had been acting head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), taking over following the resignation of Vasyl Maliuk, with whom he had planned Operation Spider’s Web, when, in June 2025, small 3D-printed drones were flown from a pick-up truck into Russia to strike military airfields and neutralise bombers. For the Russians, it was a disaster, causing both military damage and reputational harm, because the small drones had entered the country undetected, had been transported along Russian roads without hindrance or arousing suspicion, and had struck with agility. For the Ukrainians, Khmara is a man of great worth and ingenuity; he is respected, but the qualities the nation attributes to him are not the same as those the public attributes to Fedorov. Zelensky had to make a choice and has appointed a heavyweight figure to the Ministry of Defence – a figure beyond dispute, save for his military rank – whilst awaiting Parliament’s reopening after the summer recess. To keep his post, Khmara will now have to give up his military career.

There are divisions within the army, and the damage has been done by bringing them to light with such fanfare. In the coming months, Kyiv will have to grapple with a law that Fedorov never wanted to introduce, concerning mobilisation. Moscow is preparing a new mobilisation for the autumn, probably after the Duma elections in September: it has closed certain borders and entered into repatriation agreements with some countries that, in recent months, have taken in Russians of military age fleeing to avoid being called up to fight. For Fedorov, causing an ever-increasing number of Russian casualties on the battlefield was intended to act as a deterrent and prevent Moscow’s mobilisation. The former minister has succeeded in making the war increasingly costly in human terms for the Russians, but perhaps not in dissuading Russia from calling up new soldiers to the front despite possible protests. What the Kyiv military was also asking for, however, was for consideration to be given to its own mobilisation, and the minister who has digitised every aspect of Ukrainian life has never been willing to find a digital solution for compulsory conscription.