Mykhailo Drapatyi at the helm: will the new commander-in-chief come to stand for a different kind of armed forces?
When the people chanting "Bring back Fedorov!" at what became known as the "cardboard protests" in cities across Ukraine also started chanting "Syrskyi must go!", the public became gripped by the question of whether changes were afoot in the army's leadership. [Mykhailo Fedorov is the former defence minister whose dismissal in July 2026 sparked protests throughout Ukraine; Oleksandr Syrskyi is the former commander-in-chief whose resignation was one of the protesters' demands – ed.]
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy kept up the suspense for several days, although he did provide progress reports on social media about the "casting" process for the role of commander-in-chief (i.e. his meetings with brigade commanders, corps commanders, branch commanders and their deputies).
There were five candidates on the final shortlist: Mykhailo Drapatyi, Commander of the Joint Forces; Oleh Apostol, Commander of the Air Assault Forces; and corps commanders Andrii Biletskyi, Denys Prokopenko and Ihor Obolienskyi.
Close to midnight on 21-22 July, Zelenskyy finally broke his silence: "I have decided that Mykhailo Drapatyi will become the new commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine."
One officer whose corps commander was also on the extended shortlist but wasn't picked for the position told Ukrainska Pravda: "Of the candidates being talked about in the media, Drapatyi is the best option.
The most important thing is for them not to start slinging mud at him in six months' time. Because war is long and hard work, and the media are portraying him as a superhero who's going to change everything all at once. That's not going to happen," the source added.
Ukrainska Pravda has been looking at how the military views Drapatyi's appointment as commander-in-chief, the team he'll be bringing with him, what expectations the military and the public have of the changes in the army's leadership, and whether there's any role for former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov in this story.
What we know about Mykhailo Drapatyi and how the military views him
Drapatyi, 43, has an almost impeccable track record. He's a career officer, a major general with combat experience, and has been awarded the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi.
"Warm-hearted", "listens to his subordinates", "level-headed", "makes decisions quickly", "thanks privates and generals alike for their work" – that's how rank-and-file troops and commanders who have had dealings with Drapatyi on the front line have described him in conversations with Ukrainska Pravda.
Only one of the ten sources who spoke to Ukrainska Pravda was sceptical about Drapatyi's appointment as commander-in-chief.
"I'm not expecting any transformation. Misha's an old-school military man," a high-ranking representative of one of the corps told us. "He's pleasant to talk to, reasonable, even heroic. But this will be Zaluzhnyi 2.0. Now he'll start changing Syrskyi's team. New people will come in, but they'll be from the same generation.
In six months, you'll see: nothing will have changed, f**k-ups will still be happening. Drapatyi doesn't plan anything himself. He has no initiative of his own. When he was Joint Forces commander, all he did was take requests from the corps commanders and forward them to Syrskyi. That was the extent of his work."
The new commander-in-chief has served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine since the late 1990s, when he enrolled at the Kharkiv Institute of Tank Forces. After graduating, he joined the 72nd Separate Mechanised Brigade.
When the Russia-Ukraine war started in 2014, Drapatyi commanded a battalion in the 72nd Brigade that took part in the liberation of Mariupol.
To many Ukrainians, he's best known for having rammed through Russian barricades in an infantry fighting vehicle on 9 May 2014.
"After completing our tasks in Mariupol, the unit was supposed to withdraw to the designated positions that we occupied around the perimeter of the city. We were driving along and the driver shouted, 'Major, there are barricades up ahead, what do we do?' I said, 'Step on it, Dima!' That's how the BMP-2K became airborne," Drapatyi recalled in an interview with Ukraїner.
In the summer of 2014, units of the 72nd Brigade were encircled in Luhansk Oblast, near the Ukrainian-Russian border. This episode of the Anti-Terrorist Operation has gone down in history as the "Izvaryne pocket".
The Russians pounded the Ukrainian units relentlessly with artillery. In early August, Drapatyi led 260 soldiers out of the encirclement under fire. Under his command, the troops covered approximately 160 km.
Oleksandr Vdovychenko, head of the intelligence centre of the 11th Army Corps, told Ukrainska Pravda: "I will never forget the convoy of soldiers commanded by Mykhailo Drapatyi coming out of the encirclement. He was in an infantry fighting vehicle – tired, but proud and happy. People were crying tears of joy because they had managed to get out. And it was thanks to Drapatyi's strength of spirit and sense of responsibility that they succeeded."
In 2014, Vdovychenko was deputy chief of staff, and from 2021 to 2022 he commanded the 72nd Brigade. In his current position he crossed paths with Drapatyi when the latter headed the Luhansk Operational Tactical Group.
From 2016 to 2019, Drapatyi commanded the 58th Separate Motorised Infantry Brigade. At the time, the 58th Brigade was fighting in and around Avdiivka and the Bakhmut highway in Donetsk Oblast.
After commanding the brigade, Drapatyi began a two-year course at Ivan Cherniakhovskyi National Defence University. As the top graduate, he was presented with the Queen's sword of honour in 2021 by British ambassador Melinda Simmons.
When Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Drapatyi was deputy to Joint Forces Commander Serhii Naiev. In the early months of the full-scale war, he headed the Pivden (South) Group of Forces, which stopped the Russian army's advance towards Kryvyi Rih. During the liberation of the right (western) bank of Kherson Oblast, Drapatyi headed the Kherson Group of Forces.
In May 2024, former commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi appointed Drapatyi commander of the Kharkiv Operational Tactical Group to stabilise the situation after the Russians launched an offensive towards Lyptsi and Vovchansk. The Russian advance deeper into Kharkiv Oblast was halted. In parallel, Drapatyi also served as deputy chief of the General Staff for military training.
In the autumn of that year, he was sent to command the Luhansk Operational Tactical Group, which was responsible for Siversk, Chasiv Yar and Toretsk.
Officers from the group primarily remember him for having demanded honest reports from the brigade commanders.
One officer who served under Drapatyi in the Luhansk Operational Tactical Group told Ukrainska Pravda off the record: "Mykhailo knows how to assess results. If you did a bad job one day, you'd get a dressing-down. If you did better the next day, you'd get a positive assessment. He knows how to assess soldiers' professional abilities. In his view, even a junior lieutenant can head a directorate; it doesn't necessarily have to be an experienced colonel.
The downside is that he does sometimes bring leeches that he used to know in the past along with him, but only a small percentage, in my opinion."
"Drapatyi never set pointless tasks," Colonel Oleksandr Vdovychenko told Ukrainska Pravda. "When he listened to commanders' reports while planning operations, he always looked for ways to get the job done with the fewest possible casualties.
There was one case involving a battalion of the 24th Brigade that was in Chasiv Yar. The troops were in a critical situation and urgently needed to be withdrawn and regrouped. Drapatyi responded and managed to secure approval for the regrouping through the General Staff."
From November 2024 until early June 2025, Drapatyi served as commander of the Ground Forces. Meanwhile, he also commanded the Khortytsia (later Dnipro) Operational Strategic Group, which was responsible for a significant section of the front from Zaporizhzhia to Kharkiv oblasts. However, he operated in a fairly limited capacity because all resources and reserves were controlled by the commander-in-chief. While head of the Ground Forces, he spent almost the whole time on assignment in the operational strategic group's area of responsibility.
During this period, there were two high-profile scandals involving Russian strikes on Ukrainian training grounds. In early March 2025, the Russians struck Ukrainian soldiers with a ballistic missile while they were assembled at a military unit in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Drapatyi subsequently ordered an independent investigation involving military counterintelligence.
"I will demand the harshest punishment," he said. "Those who, after years of war, continue to perform their duties negligently and as a mere formality; those who drag military personnel into outdated procedures with no regard for their safety; those who assert themselves not in battle but by oppressing their subordinates – all of them are a disgrace to the Armed Forces of Ukraine."
The next time it happened, on 1 June 2025, the Russians struck a training unit of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, also in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. More than 10 service members were killed and over 60 were wounded.
After the second incident, Drapatyi tendered his resignation and took personal responsibility for the service members' deaths. But following a conversation with the president, the officer said that he would remain in service.
Zelenskyy appointed Drapatyi as Joint Forces commander a few days later.
It was then that the tension between Drapatyi and Syrskyi, which had been barely noticeable to outside observers, began to develop into a serious conflict.
A source familiar with the details told Ukrainska Pravda on condition of anonymity: "At the meeting with the president, Misha mentioned his disagreements with Syrskyi and [Andrii] Hnatov [the former chief of the General Staff under Syrskyi – ed.]. And he said to Zelenskyy: 'Maybe it's time we exchanged numbers and started communicating directly?' After that, Parmesan [Syrskyi, as "syr" means "cheese" – ed.] started going after Drapatyi and obstructing him – ordering inspections and investigations, issuing reprimands."
In the past six months alone, eight General Staff commissions have arrived to inspect Drapatyi's activities, a source in the Joint Forces Command told Ukrainska Pravda.
"One commission turns up, finds nothing, goes back again. The next one comes, finds some minor issues in the documentation – Syrskyi issues a reprimand. Drapatyi received as many as three reprimands in six months. Syrskyi did everything he could to make Mykhailo look problematic. He also restricted his public profile as much as possible, banning him from giving interviews or comments," the source added.
At the end of September 2025, as Ukrainska Pravda reported, Syrskyi disbanded the Dnipro Operational Strategic Group that Drapatyi had commanded.
After the group was disbanded, Drapatyi and his team moved east. His area of responsibility was roughly halved, covering parts of Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts.
One Ukrainska Pravda source among experienced military personnel described this as "one way to get rid of a rival".
The largest operation in which Drapatyi was involved as Joint Forces commander was the re-liberation and mopping up of Kupiansk in autumn 2025.
Accounts differ as to who contributed more to the operation – Drapatyi or Ihor Obolienskyi, commander of the National Guard's Khartiia Corps (who was also longlisted for the position of commander-in-chief).
What we do know is that Drapatyi formed the Kupiansk Tactical Group, which was directly responsible for mopping up the city.
Members of Drapatyi's team tried to convince Ukrainska Pravda that he played a decisive role in the operation, insisting that it wouldn't have succeeded without him. Other sources, less sympathetic to Drapatyi but very familiar with the Kupiansk operation, claimed his involvement amounted to little more than occasionally asking how things were going.
"Drapatyi would call the corps and brigades and ask: 'Come on, guys, why is this taking so long? Get on with it. What's taking you so long?" one source recalls.
During the clash between Oleksandr Syrskyi and Mykhailo Fedorov in early July, Drapatyi publicly sided with Fedorov. He described the former minister as "a partner to the Armed Forces within the Defence Ministry" – someone who "not only met our needs but also pushed for changes in approach, faster decision-making, and support for those willing to take responsibility for those decisions".
Fedorov, for his part, has thrown his support behind Drapatyi. Ukrainska Pravda has learned from political sources that during meetings with the president over the past week, the former defence minister argued for Drapatyi's appointment as commander-in-chief.
A paratrooper as chief of the General Staff
With Drapatyi's appointment settled, the next two most intriguing questions became: who would become chief of the General Staff (effectively the second-highest military post after commander-in-chief), and would the President's Office give Drapatyi a free hand in putting his team together?
The chief of the General Staff is responsible for planning, troop deployment and the development of the Armed Forces – so what does the President's Office, a political and bureaucratic institution, have to do with this?
In wartime, however, the chief of the General Staff, as the person with first-hand knowledge of the battlefield, is the military official who travels with delegations to meetings with Ukraine's partners. That is why photographs from these trips so often show Lieutenant General Andrii Hnatov alongside Pavlo Palisa, one of the deputy heads of the President's Office.
Incidentally, to Hnatov's credit, at least two brigade commanders have told Ukrainska Pravda that he could always be reached by phone when help was needed – whether they could no longer stomach the dressing-downs from above, or needed an urgent order to withdraw from a settlement.
No brigade commander has ever told us that Syrskyi was the person they would want on the other end of the line in a crisis.
But to get back to the new chief of the General Staff: the assumption among Ukrainska Pravda sources was that if the post required someone equally at home on the battlefield and at the negotiating table, it would go to Major General Volodymyr Horbatiuk. His name suddenly came up this week as one of those Zelenskyy was consulting.
As Hnatov's deputy, Horbatiuk was responsible for engagement with NATO, dealing with weapons supplies, joint exercises and similar matters.
Sources within the military told Ukrainska Pravda that the pool of candidates was a small one. Everyone who came in for consultations with the president this week was asked the same question: who should become chief of the General Staff?
Zelenskyy himself finally put an end to the suspense on the afternoon of 22 July, when he announced that together with the new commander-in-chief, Mykhailo Drapatyi, and acting Defence Minister Yevhenii Khmara, he had chosen former Air Assault Forces commander Ihor Skybiuk as the new chief of the General Staff.
Perhaps it was a compromise choice: someone tougher to balance out the more humane Drapatyi, and a gesture to the "paratrooper wing", which had once again been passed over for the top job of commander-in-chief.
What do we know about Ihor Skybiuk? The 49-year-old major general is a career officer – an Air Assault Forces man to the core, calm, measured and disciplined.
Skybiuk's time as head of the Air Assault Forces was relatively brief: just 18 months. He took over after the stern, tightly controlled era of Maksym Myrhorodskyi and led the paratroopers until Oleh Apostol returned from the General Staff.
Those 18 months, however, coincided with one of the defining chapters in the paratroopers' history: the Kursk offensive.
Working alongside the commander-in-chief, who was the architect of the Kursk operation, Skybiuk commanded a sweeping Ukrainian offensive into Russian territory in the summer of 2024. What began as a bold and successful operation ultimately faltered because of planning and logistical failures. The front line later shifted back towards Ukraine's Sumy Oblast, creating the conditions for Russia's expanded 20-km buffer zone along the border.
Once the fighting on Russian soil had largely died down, Syrskyi moved Skybiuk to the General Staff, whereupon he all but vanished from the public eye.
Drapatyi, for his part, offered Skybiuk some rather measured congratulations on his appointment in a Facebook post.
"I first met Ihor Skybiuk in 2022, in Ukraine's south, when we were directing the operation to liberate Kherson Oblast from the same command post. Since then, I have known him as a commander who can be trusted in the toughest circumstances – someone whose decisions, experience and inner principles can be relied on.
During his time commanding the Air Assault Forces, some strong commanders came up through the ranks under him – among them Oleh Apostol, Dmytro Voloshyn [Commander of the 8th Air Assault Corps], Yevhenii Lasiichuk [7th Air Assault Rapid Response Corps], Sviatoslav Zaiets [20th Army Corps], Emil Ishkulov [80th Separate Air Assault Brigade, 2022-2024], Andrii Tkachuk [Air Assault Forces deputy commander], and many others."
It's interesting that one of the protégés Drapatyi credited to Skybiuk was Emil Ishkulov, the former commander of the 80th Brigade who refused to lead his brigade into Kursk Oblast in summer 2024. After that he was effectively buried deep in the military hierarchy and filed under the category of those disloyal to Syrskyi.
One Ukrainska Pravda source, a senior officer who resigned after Fedorov's dismissal, told us Drapatyi's appointment has made him reconsider and stay in the military.
It remains to be seen whether Drapatyi will bring the rebels sidelined under the previous commander-in-chief back into the fold – and whether they will be able to deliver results once they are there.
What's expected of Drapatyi?
The public's hopes and expectations of Drapatyi are extraordinarily high.
You only have to look at the cardboard placards to see that: "Drapatyi for commander-in-chief," "Drapatyi = victory," "Drones should be doing the fighting, not people," "With Drapatyi we will win," "Drapatyi for commander-in-chief, Fedorov at the Defence Ministry."
Some of the service members who supported the protests, however, also felt a tad irritated: were all those people writing Drapatyi's name on bits of cardboard planning to enlist themselves? And had all those people insisting that drones should do the fighting stopped to consider that humans still have to operate them?
It's highly likely that many of those who rallied behind Drapatyi – service members and civilians alike – don't know that much about him beyond that one unforgettable image of a BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle sailing over the barricades in Mariupol.
What will happen with the military enlistment offices? Will there be any change in the monthly mobilisation target? Will Drapatyi push to reduce the number of people exempt from conscription? Will assault regiments be disbanded or restructured? And will Ukraine's armed forces launch offensive operations on some fronts or pivot fully to defence?
Only time will tell – and the military, the public and the press are watching. And there's no guarantee that every person who wrote Drapatyi's name on a cardboard placard will like the outcome. It's going to take more than having a "humane commander-in-chief" at the top to solve these problems.
"At last, now everyone who refused to serve because of that 'butcher' Syrskyi can join the Armed Forces of Ukraine!" This is another line doing the rounds among service members – a wry comment on civilians' demands and expectations.
In reality, service members told Ukrainska Pravda, humanity alone is not enough in a commander-in-chief.
What they need is an end to "seagull management"; faster adaptation to changes on the battlefield; higher pay, especially for those in rear-service roles; predictable reinforcements from training centres rather than reserve battalions alone; solutions to the assault regiment issues; fewer non-combat losses; more losses inflicted on Russia, and more besides.
One brigade commander who left his post several years ago told Ukrainska Pravda: "Drapatyi is in for a very hard time now. Knowing all the backroom games and pitfalls that, sadly, are part and parcel of the armed forces, I would like to wish Mykhailo Vasylovych fortitude and a cool head."
When Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Drapatyi's appointment in his evening address, however, he was notably vague about the specific tasks he has set for the new commander-in-chief.
For the record, those expectations are as follows:
- the defence forces' operations must continue without disruption
- long- and mid-range strikes must be carried out with absolute precision
- Drapatyi, Khmara and other designated commanders must present an updated defence strategy for Ukraine and take the corps reform forward
- Ukraine's skies must be protected against Russian strikes
- the mobilisation process needs real vision.
Ukrainska Pravda is aware that each candidate for commander-in-chief went into their interview with Zelenskyy with their own "vision of the war". But what Drapatyi's vision consists of, and how closely it matches Zelenskyy's expectations, remains to be seen.
Will Fedorov have a role in this story?
When Syrskyi was replaced, it seemed the conflict Zelenskyy had cited as the main reason for Fedorov's dismissal might disappear along with him.
But Ukrainska Pravda understands that as of 22 July, the president's position on Fedorov has not changed: he will not be reinstated as defence minister.
Zelenskyy has offered Fedorov several "worthy leadership positions", from coordinator to deputy prime minister for technological development. Fedorov has turned them all down. As Ukrainska Pravda has reported, his strategy cannot be implemented without real authority behind it.
"He doesn't need a token position," a Defence Ministry source told Ukrainska Pravda.
It seems the president and his communications team need to come up with a new explanation for a public still clamouring for Fedorov's return.
Olha Kyrylenko and Anhelina Strashkulych, Ukrainska Pravda
Translated by Myroslava Zavadska and Ganna Bryedova
Edited by Teresa Pearce