Not just Syrskyi: Who else Fedorov crossed as defence minister
The President will not nominate Fedorov for the post of defence minister. This became known during the President’s meeting with the parliamentary faction. According to him, the minister has an ongoing conflict with the Commander-in-Chief, and both should be dismissed, but he cannot dismiss Syrskyi yet.
The day before, The Economist published an article describing one of the conflicts between Fedorov and Syrskyi. But it would be wrong to think that this was the only reason for the minister’s dismissal.
And it is better to spell them all out in order to understand what will be rolled back next, and where.
Fedorov vs Syrskyi
It became known almost on the day of Fedorov’s appointment that he would seek Syrskyi’s dismissal. At the time, Mykhailo Drapatyi and Andrii Biletskyi were named as possible replacements.
During his first days in office, Fedorov presented the President with data showing that the Air Force leadership was misleading him about interception results. That same day, he appointed Colonel Pavlo (Lazar) Yelizarov Deputy Commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Fedorov then completely changed the approach to determining requirements, particularly for drone procurement, and also reduced artillery procurement volumes.
This became another source of tension between the minister and the General Staff.
The next cause of the conflict was that the army was left without unmanned ground vehicles, while the General Staff wanted specific systems delivered directly from warehouses. However, it then emerged that nothing would be purchased because, back in 2025, the ministry had overlooked changes concerning the introduction of VAT on UGVs.
In addition, Fedorov proposed his own vision for military reform. It was underdeveloped, and here, too, the President sided with Syrskyi.
"When he took office and presented his plans, we asked Fedorov whether he had the President’s support. He said yes. But now, several months later, we understand that the President sides with Syrskyi far more often than with Fedorov," one MP told Censor.NET in May.
According to The Economist, another argument broke out between the minister and the Commander-in-Chief at a meeting of the Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief in early July.
According to the publication, despite successful drone operations and progress in the campaign to isolate occupied Crimea, the generals voiced dissatisfaction with missile and ammunition procurement. In response, the head of the Defence Ministry stressed that the Crimea operation itself had been made possible by his emergency decisions on drone funding at the beginning of the year.
Witnesses described the confrontation as a clash between two different frames of reference with no common language.
But the President chose one of the two sides. And it was clearly not the one the public had expected.
A revolution in weapons procurement
The key reason for the conflict between Syrskyi and Fedorov concerns the approach to weapons procurement.
Throughout the full-scale war, we spent billions of dollars buying whatever was included in the requirements, on either the first or second list, with the exact quantities specified and, in the case of drones, even the name of the company from which they had to be purchased. The author is aware of cases in which these requirements mysteriously changed within a single day to benefit interested parties.
Upon taking office, Fedorov changed the approach to drone procurement. In March, he introduced a formula under which the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine would, in response to requests from units, compile a list of UAVs for procurement based solely on technical specifications, without naming a particular product or manufacturer.
The specific systems to be procured for frontline units according to their combat missions would be determined by a UAV ranking based on combat data from the ePoints, DOT-Chain, Brave1 Market, DELTA and Mission Control digital systems.
This completely reshaped the procurement formula and the pool of market winners.
And many were unhappy with it. From then on, the option of reaching an agreement with someone in the General Staff and pushing through one’s own product was gone.
Manufacturers did complain about Fedorov, arguing that his methodology was flawed, that transferring drones to a non-combat unit would cause the statistics to fall, and that anyone who had not invested in video documentation of successful strikes would lose out. But Fedorov’s formula was far more progressive than the previous mechanism.
Fedorov fundamentally revised the approach to what should be purchased, placing emphasis on mid-strike drones, and his formula worked.
Artillery suppliers were likewise unhappy that their orders had been reduced. "We can see that the Ground Forces are not reducing ammunition allocations, yet significantly less artillery ammunition is being procured," one supplier complained.
In May, the Defence Ministry held its first restricted tenders for 155 mm rounds. The cost savings amounted to 16%.
The next plan was to hold a similar tender specifically for the procurement of mid-strike drones.
At the latest meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Strategic Procurement Review Implementation Coordination Group, Procurement Department head Artem Romaniukov announced that tendering practices would be expanded to other types of procurement.
Now, this will evidently be halted. As will the ministry’s work on implementing the Strategic Procurement Review, which it had managed to revive over the past six months.
His own team versus outsiders
Within six months of joining the Defence Ministry, Fedorov had assembled a team made up entirely of his own people.
Following his arrival, Anatolii Klochko, Oleksandr Kozenko, Mykola Shevtsov and Hanna Hvozdiar lost their posts, followed later by Ivan Havryliuk and Yevhen Moisiuk. Oleksii Vyskub, Mstyslav Banik, Vasyl Shkurakov and Ivan Turchak joined Tetiana Ferchuk and Ihor Myronenko.
The only outsider remaining in the ministry was Serhii Boiev, who had moved there from Kamyshin’s Ministry of Strategic Industries.
In other words, Fedorov was the first minister to have his own team without representatives of various interest groups, unlike Reznikov, Umerov or Shmyhal before him.
Evidently, other political groups were not particularly pleased with this.
Another line of hostility was never publicly discussed. But it existed.
It concerned the minister and Arsen Zhumadilov, the current head of the Defence Procurement Agency. In the first few days, it appeared that the minister was prepared to send Arsen packing before the end of his term. But a swift dismissal was avoided, partly due to the intervention of the DPA Supervisory Board.
Nevertheless, just two weeks ago, there was renewed discussion that Zhumadilov would not remain in office until the end of his contract and would leave early. He was to be replaced in an acting capacity by someone close to the minister. The person’s name was known, but there is no point in naming it now.
Despite the difficulties in their relationship, the DPA and the Defence Ministry were preparing changes to the food supply system. A transition to the so-called 3PL model was under consideration, under which the DPA would hold indicative tenders among producers and then contract a logistics operator. The ministry was prepared to accept a price increase in order to improve food quality.
This, too, would have significantly altered the landscape of a market worth UAH 50 billion. And many people did not want that either.
In addition, the ministry planned to change its approaches to inspecting the quality of ammunition and other products.
Here, too, Fedorov planned to appoint his own person to lead the process. But that will no longer happen.
A media darling
In addition, the minister established highly effective communication with the media. He appears to have been the first minister to hold several off-the-record briefings for the media within six months, so many that even MPs complained that journalists saw the minister more often than they did.
Journalists took offence at the press service only once, when it provided them with quotes on the military reform only after details had appeared on pro-presidential Telegram channels, but that was probably beyond the minister’s control.
Overall, the minister was very effective in shaping his media image. He reinstated Taras Chmut, whom Umerov had forced out, to the DPA Supervisory Board. He appointed Serhii Sternenko and Serhii Flesh as advisers, and they communicated what the minister himself could not, including on matters concerning Skelia.
The minister’s team worked very closely with the Public Anti-Corruption Council under the Defence Ministry and the Anti-Corruption Action Centre. In other words, the minister turned activists into his allies.
All of this could hardly have gone unnoticed at Bankova. And officials there began to suspect that the minister, who only six months earlier had been considered as the public face of Zelenskyy’s new political project, was building that future more for himself than for them.
Taken together, all of this led to the decision to replace the minister, packaged as part of the Cabinet reshuffle.
At the outset, Mykhailo Fedorov promised to apply the mathematics of war, and he did. He promised to protect the skies with a small Iron Dome, and he did a great deal to achieve this. He created a dedicated AI unit within the ministry, which is critically important in this war. A list of his achievements can be found in his post.
Yes, the military reform did not work out as service members had hoped, but it was an attempt to do at least something. There were no changes to mobilisation. That is true. But it must be acknowledged that the battle over mobilisation had been lost before Fedorov took office, including by previous defence ministers.
Tetiana Nikolaienko, Censor.NET
