Source: The Conversation – UK
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has dismissed the country’s commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi after a turbulent week in which he also removed his defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov. The dismissal of the popular defence minister, who is credited by many as the brains behind Ukraine’s successful drone strategy, brought thousands on to the streets in protest.
Despite the clear public pressure to fire Syrskyi, Zelensky has presented his removal as part of an overall restructuring of Ukraine’s armed forces. He has appointed Mykhailo Drapatyi, commander of Ukraine’s joint forces group, to take over as commander-in-chief.
Much analysis of this episode has focused on personalities, presenting the episode as a personal conflict within Zelensky’s team. Some saw the president’s decision to side with the unpopular Soviet-style military leadership of Syrskyi rather than the popular moderniser as illogical. But our research shows that tensions between the civilian defence minister and the military leadership are institutional.
Where such conflicts arise, the war makes it logical for the president to side with the commander-in-chief. Zelensky’s recent sacking of Syrskyi due to public pressure will not alter this dynamic.
Disagreements between civilian and military leadership are normal in any country, democratic or otherwise. There will inevitably be conflicting interests. Democratic civilian control – civilian oversight of the military with a clear chain of responsibility – helps to manage these differences on a day-to-day basis. Nevertheless, war exacerbates normal competing interests and their political importance due to the existential threat. In Ukraine, institutional weaknesses make such conflicts more likely, and more difficult to regulate.
Zelensky’s dismissal of Fedorov highlights a pattern identified in our research of the period between 2019, when Zelensky was elected, and 2022 when Putin launched his full-scale invasion. Democratic civilian control of the military was an official goal in line with Nato/EU requirements. Legislation was passed but its implementation was hampered by key people’s limited acceptance of the core idea – the notion that the defence minister should be a civilian.
Our interviews with participants in the defence reform process immediately prior to the 2022 full-scale invasion made it clear that the military leadership was, perhaps predictably, resisting all manifestations of civilian control. Perhaps more surprisingly, Zelensky remained ambivalent about even its most basic requirement (a civilian defence minister). One Ukrainian defence expert captured this, telling us that Zelensky “failed to understand the logic that civilians must do the strategic policy making”.
In line with the 2018 law adopted after western pressure, since 2019 Zelensky has appointed five civilians as defence ministers. But the people we spoke with explained that he has always relied on the commander-in-chief for defence policymaking.
This has marginalised successive defence ministers and their attempts at reform – whether modest or radical.
It doesn’t help that the ministry has faced repeated corruption scandals relating to defence procurement. Three men who served civilian defence ministers between 2010 and 2014 (plus the chief of the general staff 2012-14) are now accused of treason for allegedly selling off military equipment without authorisation.
This has made establishing the trust needed for a functioning relationship between the military and civilian leadership particularly challenging.
Institutionalised conflict
Sidelining the minister was possible because the 2018 law preserved a Soviet legacy system where both the minister and the commander-in-chief were both separately responsible to the president. This means that military chiefs tended to resist taking strategic direction from the minister – usually a central tenet of democratic civilian control. When they disagreed with the minister, military commanders went directly to the president.
Conflict resurfaced despite personnel changes. For example, one senior figure we interviewed told us that, between 2017 and 2019, defence minister Stepan Poltorak and his military counterpart Lieutenant-General Viktor Muzhenko “would not even be in the same room together”. During 2019-20, relations between General Ruslan Khomchak and new minister Andriy Zagorodniuk “went south very quickly” according to our sources. Zagorodniuk, a reformer, was then sacked by Zelensky after just six months. In 2020-21, Khomchak’s conflict with Zagorodniuk’s successor Andriy Taran became spectacularly public when one sued the other.
During 2020-21 there was a huge push by reformers in the ministry, parliament, civil society and by western defence advisers to solve this institutional conflict by subordinating the commander-in-chief to the minister. But this reform failed. The military leadership strenuously resisted and Zelensky did not intervene.
All roads lead to Zelensky
Military resistance was predictable because in Ukraine’s weakly institutionalised system of power, the president is the key political player. Access to him remains the most valuable political asset. The ongoing war made Zelensky more dependent on the military top brass. He needed their trust in the face of the threat from Russia.
Our research tells us that Zelensky is more likely to side with the military leadership in the event of conflict with the defence minister. In the most recent crisis he also initially sided with his general – although this time it triggered a political crisis and the president was forced to also dismiss the military leader.
A long existential war is a complicating factor for civil-military relations because public interest in defence policy is much higher than during peacetime. Fedorov came to symbolise a more modern and hi-tech approach to warfare in contrast to Syrskyi’s Soviet style of military leadership. With protests demanding Syrskyi’s resignation and Zelensky keen to retain public confidence, a change of commander-in-chief became unavoidable.
But new personnel will not change the underlying structures which generated the political crisis in the first place. Civilian control of the military remains contested. Meanwhile the institutional arrangement allows the military leadership to bypass ministers and engenders conflict – and war strengthens the military’s ability to resist reforms that might change this.
Sarah Whitmore and Bettina Renz received research funding from the British Academy with the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Grant no. SRG19190038).
Sarah Whitmore and Bettina Renz received research funding from the British Academy with the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Grant no. SRG19190038)
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/23/ukraine-war-inside-the-longstanding-conflict-between-politicians-and-military-commanders/