Zelensky Faces Stalemate Over the Sacking of His Defence Minister
The dismissal of Ukraine’s defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, an architect of the country’s drone programme, has hardened into a political crisis. More than a thousand people rallied in central Kyiv waving Ukrainian and European flags and chanting “bring Fedorov back”; a deputy commander of the air force and two of Mr Fedorov’s advisers resigned in protest, and parliament is reported to be reluctant to confirm a successor.
Volodymyr Fesenko of the Kyiv-based Penta think tank said the rallies, resignations and parliamentary resistance amounted to “a stalemate situation”. Mr Zelensky has acknowledged that Mr Fedorov and the commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, could not work together without his mediation — a candid admission that the reshuffle resolved a command dispute at the cost of removing the government’s most popular technocrat. The Institute for the Study of War assessed that Russian claims of sweeping advances in Donetsk on 18 July were uncorroborated, and that Russian forces in fact lost ground through the first half of July. Watch whether the Rada installs a minister or the vacancy persists into August.