Andrii Onistrat: Once public pressure stops working, it will mean only one thing: our Supreme Commander-in-Chief is gradually becoming Yanukovych-like figure
Saturday’s news that Andrii Onistrat, a senior officer with the Central Directorate for Innovation Activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and founder of the 68th Brigade’s Dovbush’s Hornets UAV Battalion, had submitted a request for discharge proved significant for many.
As was the background to that formal request, which Onistrat recounted to Ukrainska Pravda: last Friday, he received an order transferring him to the 17th Corps. As Andrii himself put it caustically, he was to become its "chief paper pusher." He explained the reasons for his transfer as follows: "I think it was because of my support for Vyriy. Perhaps because of my posts in support of Fedorov. Or perhaps both."
You either already know who Andrii Onistrat is or can learn about him from Wikipedia. At various stages of his life, he has been a banker, businessman, sports executive, media figure, serviceman, and innovator. I have already written above about Dovbush’s Hornets, the well-known strike drone battalion...
On the whole, Onistrat is one of those rare people who both articulate ideas and put them into practice. And if they are prevented from doing so, they respond publicly. Their words are worth heeding.
That is why a Censor.NET journalist picked up the phone and called Onistrat. The call reached him somewhere in the Odesa region.
- Andrii, it is now the third day since you submitted your request for discharge. Please tell us how events have unfolded so far.
- At the moment, I am sitting on the shore of the Black Sea. And the children are smiling. I was granted the leave I had requested the day before. For family reasons.
I am spending three days here. I hope that on the fourth day, I will return, hand over my duties, and be discharged. Those are my hopes as things stand.
- In a comment to our colleagues at Ukrainska Pravda, you said: "In the evening, my commander called and said that a copy of an order had arrived transferring me to the 17th Corps as its chief paper pusher." What is the official title of that position?
- Senior officer in the 17th Corps’ Unmanned Systems Directorate. Or senior specialist?..
I simply know how it works. I have seen tons of these guys. They are usually between 25 and 40 years old, with blank expressions on their faces, completely drained. The paperwork has f**king worn them down; they are hounded over every little thing. They may have had nothing to do with some f**k-up on the line of contact, but they are punished for it anyway. The poor guys just trudge patiently around that command and observation post. And I feel sorry for them: they have no influence over anything, yet they catch hell for everything. That is the job. In reality, though, it is a job for someone who was forcibly mobilised off the street in 2025 or 2026 and had previously attended a university military department. You know that many of those forcibly mobilised had attended university military departments, right? And they are steeped in Russian narratives and bring those narratives with them into the army. This is a typical position for such people. That is fine – I just do not believe I am prepared to do it.
- Why are you not prepared to do it?
- I have many more interesting things to do, including things that contribute to victory.
- Andrii, when your commander called you, how did he put the order?
- He said that an extract from an order had arrived transferring me to the 17th Corps.
I said: "Then I am going to seek discharge."
He said: "Well, you will seek discharge once you are there, but for now you have to comply with the order."
That was where our conversation ended the previous evening. Then I could not sleep that night, so I logged into Army+ and put together the documents in 32 minutes. I submitted the request and, basically, by morning I had already made a public statement saying that it was a done deal.
- I take it you were unable to fall asleep after that?
- Look, I always fall asleep normally; it is just that if something is troubling me, I may wake up at one or two in the morning and it will keep me awake. I do eventually fall asleep again, but only towards morning, and I feel the effects. If, for example, I have work to do in the morning, I will be sleep-deprived all day.
- I know the feeling... I will quote your comment again – this time on the reasons for transferring you to a paper-pushing job: "I think it was because of my support for Vyriy; perhaps because of my posts in support of Fedorov; or perhaps both. It is hard... I did not think it would happen like this."
My question is: aside from these logical suspicions of yours, did you receive any "warnings"? Something along the lines of: you are getting too big for your boots, you have been writing too much, you had better watch yourself, anything like that?
- At one point, I was asked to delete a post about Vyriy. And I deleted it. Why has this happened to me now? My acquaintances differ in their interpretations: some say that someone did not like the photographs of Zelenskyy that I posted on Facebook. And that someone from the administration supposedly called. Others say that I had simply got too big for my boots. Someone said that I was a jackass... Something like that.
- Well, this is not the first time you have heard such things, because you are a proactive person...
- (Passionately) Tell me, what was I supposed to do? Lower my eyes and say that it had nothing to do with me? (Then ironically. — Ye.K.) That is a habit among professional military personnel: you are supposed to lower your eyes and then, after your third half-litre of whiskey, start telling people how much you dislike the government and how bad everything is in general.
- And what do you think?
- I do not think you necessarily have to drink whiskey before telling your friends how bad everything is. I believe that each of us has a means of expressing our position, including through our Facebook and Instagram pages. That is perfectly normal. I do not believe Ukraine went through the Maidan only for us to be afraid of expressing our personal views.
- Andrii, please explain why you believe your support for the hugely successful startup Vyriy – essentially one of the symbols of the technological breakthrough in Ukrainian FPV drones – may have been the reason for your transfer to a paper-pushing job.
- You see, when I learned that I had a way to leave the military at any time, it had a certain effect on my actions...
- Just a moment — what way of leaving the military are you referring to?
- Any Ukrainian professional serviceman who has signed a contract has two grounds for discharge.
The first is the death of a close relative. The second is having been held in captivity.
My son was killed, so I can leave the military at any time (author’s note: 21-year-old Ostap Onistrat was killed on 2 June 2023 while carrying out a combat mission near the city of Vuhledar in the Donetsk region). Fortunately, I have never been held captive, but... Well, that is the fate I was dealt. When I signed the contract, I did not read it. I simply did not read it.
- With your financial background? I would have thought you would scrutinise every single letter. No?
- Look, I was so convinced that this was my destiny that I left no room for doubt.
- Now that I understand.
- In other words, I believed that I should express my point of view whenever necessary. I have always spoken freely with senior commanders: Pavliuk, Drapatyi, or any corps commander. I am even on first-name terms with several corps commanders, despite their being brigadier generals. That is perfectly normal because, first and foremost, we are people who came to this war to win it, you understand? We did not come here to curry favour with one another or to make our superiors like the smile on our faces, or the absence of one.
I do not believe that being in the military means we should piss ourselves whenever we meet our commanders simply because they are our commanders. We are, above all, people who respect one another. And that means we can speak to one another freely, you understand?
- Let us return to the question of Vyriy. Why do you believe that it was because of your support for Vyriy that they want to transfer you to a paper-pushing job?
- Well, certain hints were dropped after that whole story. And I think it was the Commander-in-Chief’s initiative.
- Syrskyi’s? Is that something you think or something you know?
- No, these are my assumptions. This is the conclusion I reached after certain conversations and indirectly from what I heard.
- Andrii, given how little time people have these days, readers are unlikely to google Vyriy or watch your video interview with its co-founder.
So I would now ask you to briefly explain these points. Why is Vyriy so important to you on a nationwide scale?
- Vyriy offers a broad range of drones. It is one of the largest drone manufacturers and the largest manufacturer of fibre-optic drones. It produces conventional radio-controlled drones in the hundreds of thousands. It also manufactures reconnaissance drones.
And this manufacturer’s primary objective is to win the war. That is a very important factor. Because of this, they have always offered reasonable prices. In other words, they did not want to sell 100 drones and make a million. They wanted to saturate the front line with drones. And that was their main objective.
Then, for example, they became one of the suppliers on DOT-Chain Defence, an open drone procurement system.
Over time, Vyriy therefore became one of the largest drone manufacturers in the country. When you produce hundreds of thousands of units every month, you automatically generate quite substantial revenues.
- Which attracts regulatory and inspection agencies like wasps to something sweet.
- Yes, that practice has existed since the 1990s, when the tax authorities or some other regulatory body would descend on large enterprises. They would start cooking up a bogus case and carrying out sham investigative actions, ultimately forcing the company to come in and negotiate to have it dropped. For money, of course.
That is precisely what happened with Vyriy. Moreover, this case gave the entire market a powerful impetus. Manufacturers realised that they needed to unite and establish associations capable of dealing with law enforcement agencies on an equal footing.
- Tell me, in your opinion, to what extent did Vyriy’s problems stem solely from law enforcement agencies? Could someone have been behind them? Competitors or someone else?
- As of now, we have not been able to establish that. For the moment, it appears to have been an initiative of the State Bureau of Investigation. Vyriy immediately went to court and began challenging the seizure of its cash and documents. But the court hearings keep being postponed, and the other side is dragging out the proceedings.
- Then let me approach it from another angle: which of your adversaries would be pleased to see you taken out of the game, at least temporarily, and Vyriy facing problems? Since you military innovators are being knocked down like bowling pins, while some are themselves being forced to resign, is it not time to name your opponents explicitly?
- I do not know who they are. I will put it this way: my sense is that this is an entire group of companies trying to sell everything at exorbitant prices. And they do so with a self-important air, as though they were doing a good deed for the country.
In reality, however, if you look at their product range, everything is overpriced several times over. Some of the systems are genuinely good, but they are not worth that kind of money. We cannot afford to shoot down Shaheds with Patriots, as the Saudis did.
- Andrii, over the past few days, I have spoken extensively with pro-government politicians, and the views I heard from them varied greatly in tone. Some said that Fedorov’s removal was a catastrophe. Others assured me that it was no catastrophe at all, that Misha had only himself to blame, that he had failed to sort out the reform of the Territorial Centres of Recruitment and Social Support (TCR and SS) and had also promoted himself too much, which the President does not like...
I am very interested to hear your own analysis of this.
- Look, he has nothing whatsoever to do with the TCR and SS. In his own area, he initiated a contract-based system and actually put it into operation. I will say more: it failed to gain widespread traction for one reason only – because the General Staff’s personnel directorate did not issue any guidance. People had questions, but personnel officers in the line brigades had no instructions on how to implement it, so they allowed the process to stall. This is 100% confirmed information. In other words, the General Staff’s personnel officers provided no detailed guidance on exactly how these contracts were to be signed. That is why the system was not widely adopted in line units.
That is the first point. The second is that the entire system of TCR and SS is subordinate to the Land Forces, with which Mr Mykhailo has about as much to do as a guinea pig has with the sea. All the Land Forces are subordinate to the General Staff. The chain of command is unambiguous. Fedorov therefore has absolutely no influence over the TCR and SS. None whatsoever. He can initiate certain things, such as legislative amendments, but they must be backed either by a resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers or by relevant legislation. And that certainly cannot be done in two to four months.
Doing it through a Cabinet of Ministers' resolution is still relatively straightforward. In other words, it can be done within a month if you really put the screws on everyone. But not at the level of the TCR and SS, not when it comes to changing the system, changing training and so on. Especially since training itself has changed considerably over the past two or three years. Units have transformed much of their training and established their own training centres. This applies to everyone, from assault units to the 92nd Brigade.
In other words, everyone has their own training system. But this transformation took place in response to the military’s needs, not at the whim of certain officials. At one point, the General Staff simply allowed the military to implement this at the brigade level.
As for those people who accuse Mykhailo of various things, I can say that these accusations are rooted in nothing but envy. Envy of the fact that thousands of people may gather after his press conference. That the people standing on Maidan outside the Presidential Administration are there not for them, but for Mykhailo. That is what they envy.
- Do you believe these rallies and public pressure more broadly, in its various forms, can change the situation?
- For now, I believe they can. For now. Once that stops working, it will mean only one thing: our Supreme Commander-in-Chief is gradually becoming a Yanukovych-like figure.
- Do you agree that Fedorov was too eager to cultivate his own "progressive political image"? That he actively promoted himself politically?
- I do not merely disagree; I categorically disagree. As I see it, this was simply real work whose results I could observe. You know, when the transformation of the military began, I even wrote to Fedorov. I said: the military has a lot of questions, so let us do a broadcast.
- Did he respond?
- Yes. He said: "I genuinely do not have the time." He did not have the time!
You see, the problem with career military personnel is that, unfortunately, they were never taught what marketing or management were. Those two subjects were not part of their university education. Yet everything for which the best brigades and corps are known today was undoubtedly achieved using marketing. In other words, anyone can tell you why marketing is necessary for a corps to function.
- What for?
- So that it always has proposals regarding personnel, equipment, and so on. What is management for? It is there to ensure that personnel interact in a way that ultimately enables soldiers to understand what they are doing and why. And they will never think, "Someone has given me some idiotic orders." Even if an order is unclear, with proper communication it will always be received as intended.
Unfortunately, career military personnel lack this, despite taking great pride in their education. In fact, when I was applying to university, only the lowest-performing students pursued a professional military education. Not a single person in my class did! The least prestigious option chosen by any of my classmates was KISI, the Kyiv Civil Engineering Institute.
Most people in my class went into applied mathematics, computer science, or computer engineering. And I attended a top mathematics class. Yet not one of us pursued a military education! I accept that some people from district centres may have enrolled there. I know several such people – but even when they entered those institutions, marketing and management were not taught there.
- Andrii, how do you see Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s tactics now that the protests against Fedorov’s dismissal, and subsequently those calling for Syrskyi’s removal, have gained momentum? Taking into account the broader public mood, media coverage and discussions on social media?
- I believe he is stalling for time.
- And how do you see events unfolding from here?
- He has a few days. After that, we will be able to call it a political crisis.
- Meanwhile, we read his statements: "I hear the people on the streets, I am holding meetings with military personnel..."
- I will put it this way: if this entire thing had fizzled out by now, he simply would not have changed anything. But it will continue every evening. (At this point, Onistrat’s voice changes over the phone as he reacts to what is happening near him in the Odesa region. — Ye.K.) O-o-o-kay, a Shahed has just flown directly overhead.
- In which direction?
- Towards Odesa... But let me continue. As I was saying, I saw this movement with my own eyes. And I will tell you this: it is not going anywhere. These people will remain there until Zelenskyy makes the right decision.
- After those words of yours, people at the top will decide: well, obviously, Onistrat is the one funding this movement.
- I am funding it? Both my bank cards have negative balances. I live on credit and, lately, on a salary of 37,000 hryvnias. I want everyone who says that to live the way I do.
- Andrii, earlier I quoted people who believe that Fedorov is building his political profile and is therefore already guilty in their eyes. Now let me approach the issue from the other side. What should people do next if they share your view of this reshuffle, that it is a catastrophe and could contribute to Ukraine’s defeat in the war? What would you advise them to do?
- That is a very good question. There are two radical ways of dealing with this situation.
- I am listening.
- The first option is to pack your belongings and leave the country. The second is to summon all your strength, mobilise, and join a unit you like.
- What will Andrii Onistrat do now? Your three-day leave comes to an end, you return, and they tell you: "You have been discharged." What will you do next?
- I have several options. The first is to remain in miltech and represent companies that manufacture drones.
The second is to finally take up triathlon. Until now, I have only been running. That would be important to me. It would add a second workout to my daily routine.
And the third option: I could see myself returning to military service. But only under a different Commander-in-Chief. One who comes to me and says: "I want you to join my team. This is what you will be doing; this will be your authority; and this will be your responsibility."
Those are the terms on which I would return to military service.
- And which of these options do you consider the most likely?
- They are all realistic. I will definitely pursue the first one. I need to hold several consultations on that front, and I will most likely go down that path.
I am also certain that I will start training twice a day.
As for embarking on something new, well, we need to wait for a new Commander-in-Chief and see who it will be and how things will unfold. I am essentially an ordinary person: I may be invited, or I may not. Although there is another problem here.
- What is it?
- Career military personnel generally do not really understand what it means to make someone an offer. And that matters. It is no good simply saying, "Come and work for me." You need to approach someone and say: "I believe you can do this and this. So why don’t you take charge of this area?"
- Since you have already brought up this possible (still hypothetical) contact with the Commander-in-Chief, let me ask you about Syrskyi’s possible successor. Our well-informed sources say that Zelenskyy has already decided to dismiss him but has simply not announced it yet. So whom do you see as the possible replacements? Let us use the classic formula: the worst-case scenario, the best-case scenario and the realistic one. And how do you expect this process to unfold?
- Judging by the market chatter I am hearing, it will be Apostol. Who is Apostol? He is Syrskyi minus 20 years and, undoubtedly, the worst-case scenario. I know him personally, and he would last no more than four to six months in the post. That is my opinion.
The second, optimistic option. Personally, I would appoint Denys (Redis) Prokopenko.
The third, realistic option is Drapatyi. What is the difference between Prokopenko and Drapatyi? Prokopenko is extremely progressive; I consider him an icon of the Ukrainian army. Let me stress that again: an icon. He could bring the war to an end. Redis is not a politician; he is an infantryman.
As for Drapatyi, lately he has always approached our conversations by asking, "How can I help?" Even though Syrskyi deprived him of any opportunity to help. Nevertheless, he still tried to find some arrangement that would allow him to help the brigade at least a little. I have interacted with him for the past two years, and he has always begun the conversation with that same question: "Can I help you?" Incidentally, I was the one who introduced him to Fedorov.
As for the process itself, the President is surrounded by people who advise him on various matters. They shape his point of view. And he is accustomed to listening to the views of those around him.
I do not know who currently has the greatest influence on him in this matter. I think he will now listen to everything and, ultimately, make some kind of decision.
Yevhen Kuzmenko, "Censor.NET"
