THE NEW YORK TIMES: A mandate for change and a monumental test for Ukraine’s new military chief

On May 9, 2014, a 13-tonne armoured vehicle tore through pro-Russian barricades in Mariupol, launching a young battalion commander into Ukrainian legend as a symbol of raw, improvisational resistance.

Today, that soldier, Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi, assumes command of Ukraine’s armed forces in a fraught moment of military and political transition, leading his country in a battle that could have scarcely been imagined a decade ago.

It is a war both of grinding attrition and high-tech innovation, in which survival is dictated by which side can adapt faster and better integrate ever-evolving weapons into the daily slog of fighting under skies saturated with drones.

Maj-Gen Drapatyi, 43, who was appointed the top military commander by President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday night, replacing 60-year-old General Oleksandr Syrskyi. Maj-Gen Drapatyi represents a newer generation of post-Soviet military leadership in Ukraine that has embraced more modern approaches to warfighting.

He is one of the key architects of Ukraine’s “drone line” strategy. Instead of relying purely on static trenches holding vulnerable infantry troops, Ukraine created a continuous “kill zone” behind the front line filled with attack and reconnaissance drones and automated turrets.

That tactic has helped slow Russian advances, allowing Ukraine to take the initiative along parts of the front for the first time in years. It has also given hope to a war-weary nation that has lost tens of thousands of soldiers.

While recent battlefield developments have been positive, especially with long-range strikes in Russia and Crimea, analysts warned that Ukraine must ensure a smooth handover in the military leadership to maintain momentum.

The challenge is heightened by the circumstances of General Syrskyi’s dismissal. Ukraine has been engulfed in turmoil since Mr Zelensky fired his reform-minded defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, last week. Mr Fedorov, 35, had clashed with General Syrskyi over strategy, including how far to go in relying on drones and robots.

Demonstrators took to the streets to protest Mr Zelensky’s decision to side with General Syrskyi. Over six days, the crowds moved from calling for Mr Fedorov’s reinstatement to demanding General Syrskyi’s removal. Mr Zelensky granted that wish Tuesday night, replacing General Syrskyi with Maj-Gen Drapatyi, who had endorsed Mr Fedorov and his vision of modern warfare.

In an online commentary, Mick Ryan, a retired Australian general who is a fellow at the Lowy Institute, a research group in Sydney, wrote: “The danger now is that a change of command creates a period of uncertainty while new leaders find their feet, and Russian forces exploit it.

“The new team’s first job is to make sure the reshuffle does not slow the tempo of operations at the front, deep inside Russia — or innovation inside the Ukrainian military,” he added.

Maj-Gen Drapatyi steps into a matrix of crises. He must address problems with Ukraine’s recruitment system while also bracing for a possible renewed Russian mobilisation effort. He must shield energy grids from a winter strike campaign even as Ukraine’s most sophisticated air defences run low on ammunition. And he must blunt Russia’s slow and bloody campaign to level the remaining bastions of defence in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Mr Zelensky’s firing of Mr Fedorov also exposed a rift between the armed forces and the Defence Ministry over management of the war effort, which the military’s new leadership will have to navigate.

It is not clear what role Mr Fedorov will play going forward, but Mr Zelensky has offered him other roles in the administration, and the president has said the two men will meet again Wednesday.

Mr Zelensky said he wanted to give Mr Fedorov “a worthy leadership position that would allow him to bring together our country’s technological capabilities and ensure their continued development.”

For Maj-Gen Drapatyi, dealing with the president’s office will require a balancing act, analysts said. He will be pulled, they said, between asserting the operational independence favoured by military reformers and accommodating Mr Zelensky’s tendency toward direct battlefield management.

General Syrskyi’s willingness to comply with executive directives made him a predictable partner for Mr Zelensky. Maj-Gen Drapatyi, by contrast, is taking over with backing from a reformist movement demanding a departure from rigid, top-down command.

Valerii Zaluzhnyi, a former top commander of Ukrainian forces who was fired by Mr Zelensky in 2024 after the two clashed over mobilisation efforts and counteroffensive strategy, said in a statement that the task ahead of Maj-Gen Drapatyi was “much harder than he imagines.”

Taras Chmut, a prominent Ukrainian military analyst, said that the real fight in Kyiv, the capital, was over defence procurement: what Ukraine buys for the army with its own money and with partners’ money, and which powerful defence contractors might lose income in the process.

Maj-Gen Drapatyi, analysts said, will have only limited influence over those decisions and over the efforts that Mr Fedorov had started to address corruption and purchase more modern weapons, like drones.

Liudmyla Buimister, an independent lawmaker who is a former special forces commander and still serves in the military, said she expected Maj-Gen Drapatyi to change the culture of the high command, stop the practice of micromanaging battlefield decisions and bring more coherence to the deployment of forces.

Maj-Gen Drapatyi is expected to champion many of the same technology-driven initiatives that Mr Fedorov was pushing.

Jack Watling, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London, wrote in an online commentary that, with the change at the top, Mr Fedorov’s push for a data-driven approach to improve the military’s performance might now be possible.

Maj-Gen Drapatyi is also expected to empower commanders to make real-time decisions based on battlefield conditions. Under General Syrskyi, junior commanders bristled at what they viewed as micromanagement, with the General Staff needing to sign off before shifting tactics or withdrawing troops from compromised positions.

General Syrskyi gained a reputation for tolerating high numbers of casualties in holding such positions or conducting assaults, though he maintained that protecting soldiers was his priority.

With the recruitment shortfall, Maj-Gen Drapatyi, like Mr Fedorov, is believed to see problems in internal processing, training flaws and corruption as primary factors, not a shortage of available men. Ukraine’s hope is that a change in culture in the high command will increase motivation to join the military.

“Already, we are seeing a boost in the morale of the people inside the armed forces and also in the general public,” Ms Buimister said.

Chief Sergeant Andrii Klymenko, 45, reached by telephone on the southern front, said: “There is a general sense of euphoria, which is creating a kind of hard-to-explain emotional boost in motivation.

“The euphoria,” he added, “comes from the feeling that a meat-grinder style of command has been replaced, hopefully, by genuine battlefield leadership.”