Ukraine: bad week on the home front for Volodymyr Zelensky

According to The Conversation, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky is facing a government crisis on the home front. Within days, he dismissed his defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, and then was forced to fire his commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, after hundreds of thousands of people protested in the streets. Fedorov had been widely credited with masterminding Ukraine's successful drone strategy—a campaign that's damaged Russian energy infrastructure, caused fuel shortages and power outages across Russia, and brought Crimea under a state of emergency. The public's anger at Zelensky's decision to remove him was so intense that it forced a second removal. Zelensky's replacements may ease tensions: Mykhailo Drapatyi, a strategist aligned with Fedorov's hi-tech approach, takes over as military commander, and Yevhenii Khmara is the new acting defense minister. The shake-up reflects a long-standing pattern in Ukraine's government—civilian leaders tend to back their military commanders over political allies, a dynamic that traces back well before Zelensky took office in twenty nineteen.

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