Ukraine replaced its top military and political defense personnel in the past week, even as its armed forces arguably achieved their best performance in three years. Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov was ousted on July 15, followed six days later by Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskii. Both men were followed out the door by some of their most capable lieutenants.
The shakeup came amid what appears to be Ukraine’s most successful period of the war. Some 193,500 Russian troops have been killed or seriously wounded so far this year, averaging 32,000 losses per month. Russia has gained a net of just 81.1 sq km of territory, and its war economy has flattened to 0.2% growth, according to President Vladimir Putin.
The core disagreement appears to be over unmanned warfare. Syrskii created the world’s first Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) and fought the first war where FPV drones caused an estimated 95% of enemy casualties. Fedorov pressed hard for more drones, buying more in four months than the Defense Ministry bought in all of 2025, even using soldiers’ payroll money to swell orders.
Syrskii disagreed with the all-in drone strategy. “Against us is an enemy that is superior in everything, who fights, in particular, with artillery, aviation, and infantry. I cannot transfer a million-strong army ‘to drones’ in two months and say: now we are fighting like this,” he wrote on Militarnyi.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who recently told The Financial Times that “the sky will be decisive in this war,” said on July 20 he was “continuing to determine what adjustments should be made to Ukraine’s defence strategy.”
Ukraine’s drone strategy has yielded results. By the end of May, Ukraine disrupted Russian logistics in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, forcing Russia to float fuel across the Sea of Azov to Crimea. Ukraine then targeted those ships. Since June 6, Ukraine has disabled 196 fuel tankers and destroyed three-quarters of Russia’s ferry capacity across the Kerch Strait.
As an added benefit, Russia was forced to redeploy 200 units of its own unmanned forces command to protect ships, weakening its frontline. The SBS has also struck 117 electrical substations and power stations this month, plunging much of Crimea into darkness.
Ukraine’s long-range strikes destroyed a Tu-95 strategic bomber at Engels airfield and a MiG-29 fighter at Khalino airfield, in addition to numerous air defense radars. Ukraine also struck the Slavneft-Yanos refinery in Yaroslavl and four warehouses of the Wildberries online retail group.
Russia has retaliated by targeting Ukraine’s port infrastructure on the Black Sea. Maersk said on July 22 it was diverting container traffic from Odesa and Chornomorsk to Romania’s Constanta. Ukraine has retaliated by bottling up Russia’s grain exports via the Don river.
Russia is also increasing the number of ballistic missiles in its nightly strikes. Ukraine says it can intercept 95% of drones and 87% of cruise missiles, but fewer than half of Russia’s ballistics. Zelenskyy wrote to Putin in June: “You hope that ballistics will do for you what everything else has failed to do.”
Source: www.aljazeera.com