It took the crowds outside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office less than one week to get the leader to reverse a recent decision. On July 15, Zelensky fired Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, the technocrat who digitized the Ukrainian state and was trying to do the same to its army, and named Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Soviet-schooled commander that Fedorov had pressed the president to remove, as his replacement. A week later, Zelensky reversed course.
Ukrainians are dubbing the protests the “Cardboard Maidan,” after the 2014 demonstrations that drove a corrupt president from office. Every evening for a week, crowds gathered near the presidential office, holding handmade signs torn from boxes and demanding that Zelensky remove Syrskyi and reinstate Fedorov. Soldiers and veterans joined students and activists, and rallies spread to other Ukrainian cities.
Zelensky heard them out, at least in part. He announced the dismissal of Syrskyi and named Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi as the new army chief. Drapatyi, part of the new generation of army leaders, was the combat commander who led an armored breakthrough in Mariupol in 2014 and later helped organize the defense of Kryvyi Rih and the liberation of the Kherson region’s western bank.
