Fedorov breaks his silence: Ukraine’s army chief Syrskyi gave him an ultimatum—then blocked his reforms

Outgoing Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov used a briefing on 16 July to say Ukraine's top military command blocked his reforms and that Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi handed him an ultimatum, Militarnyi reported. He said he had pushed to replace both Syrskyi and General Staff chief Andrii Hnatov, and that the General Staff spent months refusing to sign off on his changes. He spoke a day after confirming he was leaving the post.

Zelenskyy's decision drew a rare wartime backlash: protests broke out in Kyiv and more than a dozen cities, and deputy Air Force commander Pavlo Yelizarov resigned the same day, warning that the firing and the blocking of Fedorov's reforms would "cause numerous casualties and destruction of Ukraine." 

Fedorov, credited with building the drone force that reshaped the war, is being replaced mid-reform. 

The ultimatum

Fedorov said that once Zelenskyy told him he did not plan to dismiss Syrskyi, he accepted it and agreed to work with the general, "because our client is the Ukrainian people." But his ministry's initiatives began to be blocked, he said, and Syrskyi was "not ready to talk about problems personally, to his face."

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Instead, the commander preferred to "weave intrigues" and assume someone had ordered a media campaign against him. That is what led Syrskyi to effectively deliver an ultimatum, Fedorov said.

"Instead of figuring out how to defeat Russia asymmetrically, which is the commander-in-chief's task, he figured out how to split the country," he said. 

Fedorov stressed he had not set an "either me or Syrskyi" condition and was ready to keep working, and credited Syrskyi with saving the country in 2022. But the war had fully changed since, he argued: 

"The drone changes the architecture. The management system has changed, we must change."

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Why he wanted the command replaced

Fedorov said he had proposed "radical personnel decisions" — removing both Syrskyi and Hnatov — to fix systemic problems in the army, Liga reported. Ukraine has no other option, he argued, if it wants to beat the enemy asymmetrically and with minimal losses, "where strong leader-commanders will develop, will not be suppressed and written off." He tied the demand to ending abuses in the army, including in the Skelia assault regiment, hit weeks earlier by reports of non-combat deaths in its training centers.

The blocking

The obstruction was concrete, Fedorov said. For six months the General Staff refused to sign the documents needed to change the ministry's structure and create a competence center, citing formal objections and a reluctance to bring in new people.

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The ministry kept improvising around the blocks: 

"We always hacked this with some non-standard solutions and continue to do it, but overall it doesn't work if we're talking about a serious system." 

Even routine reforms stalled — approving a basic plan to supply brigades with drones took four months, and distribution still ran on loyalty rather than need, he said at the same briefing.

Fedorov also rejected the blame directed at his ministry over mobilization, noting the recruitment centers answer to the commander-in-chief and the General Staff, not to him, Liga reported. There is no fixing mobilization "without a new social contract and without real changes in the army," he said.