Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has said he called for Oleksandr Syrskyi, Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces, to be replaced, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not agree. According to Fedorov, all the Defence Ministry's proposals to improve the armed forces' operations on the front line encountered resistance from the commander-in-chief.
Source: Fedorov during a briefing on 16 July
Quote: "When the president said he did not intend to replace Syrskyi, I fully supported that decision and said I would learn to work with him, because our client is the Ukrainian people as a whole.
Advertisement:
But we found ourselves in a situation where every initiative we put forward began to be blocked. Syrskyi is not willing to discuss problems face-to-face. He is willing to attend meetings in person, to engage in intrigues and to assume that someone ordered a media campaign against him, rather than acknowledge that the problem lies in what is actually happening. This ultimately led to a situation in which, in effect, he issued an ultimatum.
