Ukraine replaces top military brass despite recent battlefield gains
Ukraine ousted its defence minister and commander-in-chief even as its armed forces achieved their best performance in three years, highlighting a strategic rift over drone warfare.
Ukraine replaced its top military and political defence personnel in the past week, even as its armed forces arguably achieved their best performance in three years. Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov was dismissed on July 15, followed six days later by Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskii. Both men were accompanied out the door by some of their most capable lieutenants.
The reshuffle comes at a time when Ukraine seemed to have found a winning formula, making 2026 Russia’s worst year of the war in terms of manpower losses, territory, and economic performance. According to Ukraine’s defence ministry, some 193,500 Russian troops have been killed or seriously wounded. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports that Russia has gained a net of only 81.1 square kilometres for these enormous losses.
The core of the disagreement appears to be unmanned warfare strategy. Syrskii created the world’s first Unmanned Forces Command (SBS) and fought the first war where FPV drones caused an estimated 95 percent of enemy casualties. Fedorov pushed hard in this direction, buying more drones in four months than the defence ministry had bought in all of 2025. Syrskii, however, warned that he could not simply “transfer a million-strong army ‘to drones’ in two months.”
Ukraine’s successes include extensive strikes on Russian logistics and oil supply. Since June 6, Ukraine’s commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert Brovdi, said Ukraine had disabled 196 fuel tankers and destroyed three-quarters of Russia’s ferry capacity across the Kerch Strait. The SBS has also struck 117 electrical substations, most in Crimea, plunging much of the peninsula into darkness.
Long-range strikes this week destroyed a Tu-95 strategic bomber at Engels airfield and a MiG-29 fighter at Khalino airfield in Kursk. Ukraine also struck the Slavneft-Yanos refinery in Yaroslavl and four warehouses of the Wildberries online retail group, which it suspects Russian recruits use to order protective gear and weapons.
Russia has retaliated by targeting Ukraine’s Black Sea port infrastructure and increasing ballistic missile use in nightly strikes. Container shipper Maersk announced on July 22 it was diverting container traffic from Odesa and Chornomorsk to Romania’s Constanta. Ukraine claims to have bottled up Russia’s grain exports from the Don river to the Sea of Azov.
