In July, Zelenskiy conducted the now annual government reshuffle. He eventually sacked both the Minister of Defense Mykhailo Fedorov and, following public outrage, the Commander of the Armed Forces Oleksandr Syrskyi.Once the dust has settled over the summer, we seek to understand the reasons for this change and the consequences for the frontline, the army, and defense industry. 

Let’s start with the why: the replacement of both Defense Minister and the Commander of the Armed Forces was widely interpreted as an irreconcilable inner conflict between Fedorov and Syrskyi. However, a closer look exposes deeper structural challenges. The most important among them concern procurement system, frontline strategy, and mobilisation reform.

Procurement system changes

First and foremost, Fedorov’s dismissal in July is linked to the procurement system changes his team had been implementing since the winter 2026. Most importantly, Fedorov based Ukraine’s arms tenders on verified battlefield data through Delta command-control system. He also continued the “e-points” system launched in 2025. 

«The latter awards military units e-points for each confirmed target hit, which they can spend on equipment bought directly from manufacturers. This speeds up supply, rewards innovation, and adds a complementary channel to the existing centralized procurement system run through the Ministry of Defence, Defense Procurement Agency, the Main Logistics Command and the General Staff. That system was built for large, standardized contracts and 1 year planning cycles, which made it slow to adapt to 3 months pace fast-changing frontline needs and difficult for newer, smaller manufacturers to enter due to their small scale. With e-points, demand comes directly from the units using the equipment, so battlefield performance, maintenance repair and overhaul speed become the main selection criteria,” explains Bohdana Fedun of Rasmussen Global in Kyiv.

Fedorov’s changes in arms procurement prioritized mid-range strike systems and drones over other types of equipment. This threatened the established arms sellers and their patrons, who supposedly rallied around the General Staff  and relied on the old procurement system. The procurement struggle between several camps resulted in competing defense procurement priorities, where the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff had contested visions of what equipment was needed on the front to break the tie. The competition left planning incoherent and traditional suppliers frustrated, weakening Fedorov’s political position, commented investigative journalist Roman Romaniuk from Ukrainska Pravda.

Frontline strategy

Second, seeking to address manpower shortages, Fedorov stepped out of his constitutional responsibilities as Defense Minister when he sought to influence military operations through procurement. Fedorov argued that killing 35,000 Russians per month does not allow to build a decisive advantage against Russian scale. Instead, the effort focused on the robotisation of war and the digitalisation of the Army. He also criticized Syrskyi’s doctrine of incremental shifts toward precise, low-cost strikes and EW “domes”. For Fedorov, to sustain attrition, Ukraine had to shift to asymmetric, technology-driven warfare, treating procurement and frontline strategy as two sides of the same coin. Seeking to expand his responsibility left Fedorov exposed. 

Mobilization reform 

Third, once the tide turned against him, Fedorov was criticized for a failure to implement the long-promised mobilisation reform. This issue has become the least addressed and the most divisive in Ukrainian society, compounding questions about experience vs pay, motivation, and accountability for desertion, none of which can be answered with leadership change alone. Fedorov also launched contracts for military personnel promising significantly increased payouts, but members of parliament later stated that these pledges were not backed by the actual capacity of the state budget. 

Applying corporate business metrics to military administration presented certain structural challenges. While acknowledging a prominent and successful unit is understandable, the defense line is also sustained by many lesser-known brigades and corps. Fedorov’s critics argue that on his watch the units failing the metrics went unnoticed and underfunded. The e-points program described above is a case in point: units accumulate points based on confirmed strikes, which directly determines their access to additional funds to  buy weapons and other supplies. However, the units holding defensive sectors or facing lower operational tempos struggle to generate comparable metrics, which leads to uneven state funding, compounding operational vulnerabilities despite these units’ vital contribution to holding the front. 

What’s next

Today, most of Fedorov’s team remains inside the ministry continuing to implement the reforms they have launched, now under the new Minister of Defense, General Yevhenii Khmara. The combination of Khmara with the new Commander of the Armed Forces Mykhailo Drapatyi is marked by higher level of mutual trust, enabling greater corps autonomy and more honest reporting. Both former Head of the Ground Forces Mykhailo Drapatyi and former head of the SBU’s Alpha unit Yevheyi Khmara represent a generation forged by the 2014 war. In his official communication about his vision, Drapatyi emphasized soldiers as the army’s core asset and faster frontline innovation.