In what looks like a colossal blunder, Volodymyr Zelensky has forced out Ukraine’s popular defense minister.
In what looks like a colossal blunder, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has forced out the country’s popular defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, an old (sort of: he is only 35) associate. Fedorov had been just six months in the role but had held ministerial rank since 2019 with a focus on “digitalizing” the sclerotic Ukrainian state, not least its citizens’ interactions with it, a role that spilled over into the military side.
From Reuters:
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Fedorov made a public appeal to SpaceX owner Elon Musk to switch on the Starlink satellite internet service over Ukraine – which Musk promptly did. Ukraine’s military now uses tens of thousands of Starlinks, with commanders describing it as the lifeblood of their battlefield communications. In February this year, Fedorov worked with Starlink to block its unauthorised use by Russia. . . .
Early in the war, he also advocated building an “army of drones” — becoming an early advocate of a technology that eventually came to dominate the battlefield.
His digital ministry set up a system under which Ukrainian soldiers who could video-verify strikes on Russian soldiers and vehicles were given points to buy weapons such as drones.
That last is just one example of the way that private-sector thinking (and more than just thinking) has contributed to Ukraine’s remarkably successful drone warfare. This is, in part, a reaction to the initiative-sapping, top-down approach that too much of Ukraine’s military hierarchy inherited from the Red Army.
Moreover, a by-product of this new “incentive scheme” is, Reuters reports, that Fedorov’s ministry “gained a large pool of battlefield data, which he portrayed as a ‘card’ Ukraine could wield in its negotiations with allies for more military support.”
That has made a difference. Ukraine’s edge in drone warfare has reduced the perception, however unfair, that it is little more than a supplicant, a Ukrainian Oliver always asking for “more.” Thanks to the expertise Ukraine has demonstrated in a field that looks a lot like war’s next iteration, it has something to offer its allies — beyond, that is, the small matter of acting as their de facto front line. It doesn’t hurt that Ukraine’s drones have frozen Russia’s ability to take the offensive by sea and, increasingly, by land.
As defense minister, Reuters writes, Fedorov “set out a vision of a path to victory that involved inflicting 50,000 monthly casualties on Russia, neutering its aerial attacks and crippling its economy.” But he also “vowed a data-driven overhaul of the vast ministry, which had been beset by corruption and mismanagement scandals throughout the war.”
The toxic legacy of Soviet rule has proved notoriously difficult to erase throughout Moscow’s old imperium. Ukraine is not unique in that respect, but that’s cold comfort. Did Fedorov ruffle too many feathers? Best guess, yes.
From the Financial Times:
Fedorov repeatedly blocked attempts to steer lucrative procurement contracts to favoured companies, which put him at odds with powerful figures inside Ukraine’s political and defence establishment, said people familiar with the situation.
In the absence of a good explanation for Fedorov’s dismissal, Zelensky appears to have blundered badly. And if he was somehow forced to take this decision, that makes the bad news still worse. Russia’s military bloggers, often nationalist hard-liners who are given some license to criticize the course of the war, are celebrating today.
From the Moscow Times (which, wisely, is no longer based in Moscow):
Pro-Kremlin military bloggers called Fedorov “far too smart and effective an enemy,” arguing that his removal would make it much easier for the Russian army to fight against Ukraine. . . .
“The fact that Zelensky removed such a prolific and dangerous — for Russia — figure from a leadership position is very good [for Moscow] especially considering that his resignation will most likely also lead to a purge of Fedorov’s people from the structure of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry,” said Informant, a pro-war Telegram channel with 94,000 subscribers.
Military blogger Svyatoslav Golikov said the “achievements of Fedorov’s team” at Ukraine’s Defense Ministry had had a “significant impact” on Russia’s Armed Forces.
The Telegram channel Voenny Osvedomitel (Military Informant) told its 612,000 subscribers that Fedorov was “responsible for expanding digitalization in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the use of drones.”
The Kyiv Independent:
“It’s demoralizing,” former soldier Bohdan said as he stood amid thousands of others in Kyiv on July 16 protesting outside the President’s Office against the dismissal of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.
“People had hope that reforms were coming, that things were finally changing for the better. They were already beginning to happen. Now it feels like everything is going back to the way it was,” the 29-year-old told the Kyiv Independent.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision a day earlier to dismiss Fedorov from his role was met with outrage across Ukrainian society, but nowhere was it felt more keenly than among those in Ukraine’s military.
Zelensky has to find some way to backtrack, something he did last year after protests over a law that, as the Kyiv Independent describes it, stripped anti-corruption institutions of their independence. That he is now saying that he is “confident that [Fedorov] will remain on” his team, in some form, may be a sign that some sort of retreat is in the works.
It needs to be.