Ukraine’s Leadership Crisis
Ukrainian resistance is in more peril than at any time since February 2022.
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February and March 2022 in Ukraine felt like the apocalypse. In a besieged Kyiv where missiles and artillery barrages thundered in the distance and shrouded the horizon in black smoke, I remember the fear in regular people’s eyes, overshadowed only by the resolve of Ukrainian soldiers defending the city. Now there is less fear—Ukrainians have gotten used to “the new normal”—but a new emotion is palpable: frustration. That frustration extends both to Ukrainian leaders and to their indecisive Western allies—and it comes through at a moment when Ukraine is subject to a more intense crisis than at any point since those first months of Russia’s invasion.
Last year’s counter-offensive turned out to be a false hope as Ukrainian forces failed to achieve any meaningful territorial breakthroughs in their quest to cut off Russia’s land route to Crimea. House Republicans’ stonewalling of aid to Ukraine and the resurgent popularity of Donald Trump threaten to put the nail in the coffin of American support for Kyiv. Despite recent Ukrainian successes in taking out crucial Russian air force assets, naval vessels, and targets deep within Russia itself, the Ukrainian army is facing crucial ammunition and manpower shortages that threaten to turn existential if no new foreign aid arrives soon. And most importantly, Moscow’s forces have been advancing slowly yet steadily westward, forcing Ukrainian forces to withdraw from critical cities like Avdiivka in the Donbas last month. With all this in mind, the Ukrainian population has had to come to terms with the realization that the war will drag on for years to come and that Russia may be on the upswing once again.
This is the moment when Ukraine would most want to give the impression of strong and unified leadership. Unfortunately, it is exactly now that fractures have emerged behind the scenes and that President Zelensky has been at his most unpopular since 2022, when his approval had soared to over 80%.
They say you shouldn’t change horses in the middle of a stream, but Zelensky appears to be changing out his entire cavalry. The dismissal of his longtime Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi was only the beginning, according to the Ukrainian president, who promised a broad “reset” of both his military and civilian staff last month, implicitly as a reaction to the pressures Ukraine is currently facing. So far, Zelensky has promoted Oleksandr Syrskyi, previously the head of Ukraine’s land forces, to the top spot in the army’s hierarchy and revamped the top military brass. The supposed reasoning behind these moves, according to Zelensky, is to minimize bureaucracy, to become more technologically nimble on the battlefield, and to create a leadership cadre that is unified in its vision —“all push[ing] in the same direction,” in the president’s words.
Yet the reality is much more complicated. Although initially uniting Ukrainians of all backgrounds, the war has begun to splinter Ukraine’s leaders along political fault lines once again—some new, some old. In response to the battlefield failures of the last year, Zelensky not only wants to see fresh blood at the top of the hierarchy of the armed forces but is also seeking to consolidate his own political camp, seemingly placing a premium on personal loyalty and adherence to his own vision of the war’s future.
In doing so, he has delivered a significant blow to the Ukrainian army’s esprit de corps. Syrskyi was for several reasons an odd choice to replace Zaluzhnyi. He is a military traditionalist, and his record of stubborn, unimaginative fighting at the Battle of Bakhmut earned him the nickname “the Butcher.” His ascension to his new role elicited rather mixed reactions among Ukraine’s rank and file. As one Ukrainian soldier wrote on X in response to Syrskyi’s appointment: “We’re all fucked.” This soldier was not alone—only 40% of Ukrainians trust Syrskyi, in stark contrast to Zaluzhnyi, whom a stunning 94% of the country view favorably. So popular was Zaluzhnyi that Zelensky’s own approval rating dipped by five points to 60% after he fired the general.
Such a lack of faith in Ukraine’s top military leader could not have come at a worse time for the country. Despite shortages across the frontlines, Ukraine’s politicians have been struggling for months to put together a mobilization strategy, facing a dearth of capable recruits and a flight of fighting-age men. Syrskyi understands that his résumé is a hindrance in encouraging Ukrainians to join the military, which is why he seems to have made a concerted effort over the last month to highlight his concern for individual soldiers’ lives on the frontline and win back popular opinion across the military.
The sense at the moment is of a political class that is factionalizing and selecting sub-optimal solutions to thorny problems. Syrskyi’s approach since his appointment has been to mimic Zaluzhnyi’s cautious, realist style—he has drawn up contingency plans in case American military aid never shows up, withdrawn from Avdiivka to avoid massive troop losses, and redoubled the army’s commitment to technological advancement and drone warfare. That close resemblance to Zaluzhnyi’s approach poses the question of why Zaluzhnyi was dismissed at all. And by all indications, the answer is that it had little to do with military strategy but was rather about personal friction between Zelensky and the former military leader.
Zaluzhnyi
was not a part of Zelensky’s camp—and was thus a potential rival. As
Ukraine’s fortunes dwindled over the last year, infighting between Zelensky and competitors
like former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko rose. Pre-2022 Ukraine
was a patchwork of oligarchic fiefdoms where corruption ran rampant.
With Russia’s invasion, Zelensky and his political insiders sensed an
opportunity to go after corruption and chip away at the power of the
oligarchs, and they did so in dramatic fashion by firing military recruitment heads along with Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov
last year. But as important as such moves were, they were also bound to
breed enemies, which is likely a part of the reason why Zelensky feels
himself to be politically brittle and in need of unswerving loyalty
within his inner ranks. Zaluzhnyi seemed to fall outside the group that
Zelensky believed he could absolutely trust, and Syrskyi, if less
popular nationally and less effective as a general, was from Zelensky’s
perspective the politically safer choice.
In the case of Zaluzhnyi’s dismissal, however, Zelensky may well have allowed personal feelings and political considerations to further damage Ukraine’s morale at a critical point in its war effort. Recruitment is now far below where it needs to be. And, perhaps most worrisome of all, the dismissal sends a troubling message to NATO and Ukraine’s allies: The “reset” undermines existing relationships between Western leaders and their Ukrainian counterparts.
At this point in the war, it is vital that Zelensky keeps his priorities straight. Syrskyi since his appointment has done his part to show that the “Butcher” sobriquet was misapplied and that he is a capable understudy for Zaluzhnyi. However, Zelensky is still very much under scrutiny, and cannot allow political considerations to undermine the image of assured government that he has cultivated since February 2022. Zelensky’s confidence-inspiring personal image, together with his team of clear-headed confidantes who gained the trust of the Ukrainian people by saving the country from the brink of destruction, were key factors in the country’s impossibly successful defense in the early days of the invasion. Now that Ukraine is on its own in a way that it hasn’t been since the start of the war, a unified, unassailable command structure is of superlative importance for Ukraine’s continued survival.
Michal Kranz is a Warsaw-based journalist who covers Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He has reported from the ground during the war in Ukraine, covered politics and society in Lebanon, and regularly reports on regional developments from Poland.