Zelenskyy defends the right to protest and hands defense to his strike-war chief

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the crowds demanding the return of dismissed Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov that they were right to protest even during the war—then pressed ahead anyway, naming his special operations chief Yevhenii Khmara acting defense minister and passing over both Fedorov and Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, the reported frontrunner.

Explore further

“Cardboard” protests against Zelenskyy’s firing of Fedorov erupt across Ukraine

It was the second time in a year that street protests have thrown one of Zelenskyy’s decisions into doubt. Last July, a week of rallies forced him to reverse a law stripping Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies of their independence. He called his own answer an ellipsis rather than a full stop and said Fedorov would remain on his team in a role to be named later, he told a briefing reported by Ukrainska Pravda.

The president tied the incoming minister’s first task to ending “busification”—recruitment officers seizing men in public and bundling them into minibuses bound for enlistment offices. At the briefing, he floated Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko as the man who could stop it. By evening, he had chosen Khmara instead.

The rallies he answered had filled nearly 20 cities that morning, most of the crowds young, and they stayed peaceful.

The man he fired blames the army

Fedorov, in his own farewell briefing hours earlier, argued that no minister can fix mobilization without deeper change within the army, since Ukraine’s recruitment centers answer to the military command rather than the Defense Ministry, as reported by LIGA.net.

Where leadership and supply already work, he said, the problem disappears—pointing to the National Guard’s 13th “Khartia” brigade, which he said has a waiting list of at least 2,000 foreign volunteers. The state, he added, is selling its recruits lies and chaos.

Explore further

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

That runs counter to the reason given for his removal. Zelenskyy told his party’s faction that Fedorov had botched the recruitment-center reform and that he could not choose between the minister and Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, lawmakers said afterward, as Censor.net reported.

Zelenskyy turns to his special operations chief

Khmara, whom Zelenskyy had made acting head of the Security Service in January, was told to run the ministry. The president praised his experience directing Ukraine’s long-range strike operations against Russia and said he would ask parliament to confirm him once the legal formalities were done, the president wrote on his official channel.

Parliament has already confirmed a new prime minister, Naftogaz chief Serhii Koretskyi. Khmara’s confirmation is the vote still to come.