Protests are continuing in Ukraine over the decision by President Zelensky to fire Mykhailo Federov, his popular and effective defense minister.
Protests are continuing in Ukraine over the decision by President Zelensky to fire Mykhailo Federov, his popular (too popular?) and effective defense minister, whose reshaping of the way that Ukraine was fighting Russia — a reshaping that predated his brief (six-month) tenure at the ministry of defense — had delivered remarkable results.
It will be a long time, if ever, before we know the full explanation for Federov’s dismissal, but a good part of it can be found in the difference of approach between the new-model war being developed by the 35-year-old Federov and the older version preferred by Ukraine’s military hierarchy, too many of whom had been shaped if not necessarily by their time spent in the Red Army, but by that army’s intellectual heritage.
To be fair, it should be recognized that this was the same Ukrainian army that beat off the Russian army’s attempted blitzkrieg in early 2022. That was a feat that many thought was beyond Ukraine’s capabilities, and it is something for which Federov’s seemingly successful rival, Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian military, deserves great credit. As Federov himself has put it, “Syrskyi saved our country in 2022. He participated in the Kyiv operation, the Kharkiv operation, Kherson. We cannot underestimate such a commander.”
But the consequence of beating off the blitzkrieg was that a short war was bound to become a much longer war (there was little chance that the Kremlin was going to call it a day). That meant that Ukraine was doomed to fight a war of attrition against a far larger opponent indifferent to the losses of its own men, a war in which, however determined its forces, Kyiv would struggle to prevail. The failure of Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive was a warning.
As the Kyiv Independent explained matters in an editorial yesterday:
Facing an overwhelmingly larger Russian army, Ukraine always needed an asymmetric strategy based on advanced technology and creative thinking to have a chance of defeating Russia. A small Soviet army can never beat a large Soviet army, as years of slow but steady Russian advances on the battlefield have shown.
Fedorov understands that.
His approach was delivering results. In my article in the latest issue of the magazine, I noted that:
Ukraine’s drone program, a remarkable demonstration of what ingenuity, improvisation, flexibility, and the private sector can achieve, has played a key part in slowing the Russian advance in the east. I asked one veteran how fighting had changed since 2022. After the drones started appearing in force, the battlefield had, he said, turned into “hell.” “There was nowhere to hide.” The Ukrainians may have the edge, but the Russians have their drones too.
The result has been to create a “kill zone” over and beyond the line of contact where the Russian and Ukrainian armies meet (and any no-man’s-land in between), making any movement in this area extremely dangerous and creating something very close to stalemate. . . .
As technology improves, so the kill zone widens, from ten miles or so to, in some places, as much as 30 miles. This is taking Ukraine closer to establishing what its former defense minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk has described as the “strategic neutralization” of Russia on the ground. This could mean that instead of being held at bay by conventional and bloody attritional fighting, Russia’s ability to take the offensive on land is, as it already is at sea, frozen.
Ukraine’s longer-range drones are now taking the conflict deep into Russia. For example, its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure and shadow fleet tankers in the Black and Azov seas has, as the Financial Times’ Christopher Miller put it, “spurred Russia’s worst fuel crisis in decades.”
Miller notes Federov is also:
[defending] procurement reforms introduced during his tenure, saying competitive tenders for artillery shells and drones had lowered costs, broadened access for Ukrainian manufacturers and disrupted networks that had long favoured politically connected suppliers.
That will not have endeared him to some in the old guard. That may well have been a major problem, although that should be no excuse for the choice that Zelensky has made.
Forced to choose between the man who was turning the war of attrition around with technology and intelligent strategy on one hand, and the man who was sabotaging it with micromanagement and Soviet thinking on the other, Zelensky thought about it and chose the latter. . . .
If this town is really too small for both Fedorov and Syrskyi, it is time for the general to go. Ukraine doesn’t lack brilliant, forward thinking generals, and apt candidates have been on the table for years. . . .
Zelensky still has a chance to undo this damaging decision — or watch the country pay a tragically high price for his mistake.
Quite so.