Has the thaw begun? What Drapatyi has brought to the role of commander-in-chief – and what the military thinks
In mid-July 2026, as angry protesters carrying cardboard signs massed outside the President's Office, Volodymyr Zelenskyy spent several days meeting corps and group commanders and deputy commanders.
As Ukrainska Pravda reported at the time, the president asked them about the situation on the front line, problems with supplies, staffing and so on.
He didn't ask what they thought of the then commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, nor did he offer any of them the job. He had already made a decision – one that to a large extent had been forced upon him.
That decision was to appoint Mykhailo Drapatyi.
"Those meetings were probably necessary so the president could see how the transition of military command would play out – whether everything would fall apart if the commander-in-chief were removed. Because Syrskyi had built a system in which everything revolved around him," a high-ranking source in military circles told Ukrainska Pravda.
"Syrskyi eliminated any competition around him. To climb the career ladder, you had to be loyal. Basically, his only potential rivals were Drapatyi and [Lieutenant General Andrii] Hnatov. He sidelined Drapatyi from the command and curtailed his powers at the Joint Forces Command, and he turned Hnatov into an ally," the source added.
A third candidate for the post of commander-in-chief – whom Syrskyi did not "eliminate", because he actually saw him as his successor – was Oleh Apostol, Commander of the Air Assault Forces. But Apostol "did a very clever thing", as one UP source jokingly put it, and ruled himself out of such a fate.
Given that the president did appoint Drapatyi, it can be concluded that all the commanders assured him that the front line would not collapse without Syrskyi.
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy needed to reassure several thousand protesters with cardboard signs as soon as possible that he was listening to them and was prepared to meet one of their demands (though not the most pressing one).
And so, as a result of major political protests in central Kyiv, the Ukrainian military got a new commander-in-chief: 43-year-old Mykhailo Drapatyi. Adored among some sections of the military, Drapatyi has a reputation for treating his troops humanely and is the polar opposite of Syrskyi in the public imagination.
Over the two and a half months that Drapatyi and his team have been in post, they have been virtually absent from the public eye. Surprisingly, this was a deliberate decision by the commander-in-chief himself.
One insider told UP: "They say Drapatyi holds a lot of international meetings, but for now he doesn't want them publicised. He visits the troops – less often than Syrskyi, yes, but he does go – and again, there are barely any communications about that from either the Commander-in-Chief's office or the General Staff. Still, his visits occasionally crop up in posts by brigades and battalions, as happened, for example, with the R.U.G. [an assault regiment within the Khartiia Corps that Drapatyi visited and that later made the visit public – ed.]. That's his approach, his vision. The idea is that when there are results, then we'll talk about them."
Ukrainska Pravda decided to fill this information gap by speaking to around two dozen officers of various ranks and analysing Commander-in-Chief Drapatyi's first steps – as well as providing examples of how those steps are being received within the military.
A rapid and sweeping purge of personnel
In mid-August, one of UP's sources in the defence forces showed us part of a table listing potential appointments by the new commander-in-chief.
Several of the names, including some senior people – corps commanders and deputy commanders – had an abbreviation written next to them that stands for "Transfer to the reserve battalion". In other words, dismiss them from their posts.
This came as something of a surprise to us, since the military doesn't usually make personnel decisions quite so ruthlessly. The fact is that the Ukrainian army really does have a shallow bench, and most senior military posts are short-lived. So anyone who reaches the top of the pyramid tends to avoid making enemies before the moment when the pyramid inevitably turns upside down again.
Drapatyi, however, appears to have chosen a different path.
Firstly, he did indeed transfer several dozen colonels, brigadier generals and other officers to the "reserve battalion".
Drapatyi embarked on a "purge" both within the General Staff – where he wants to retain people with combat experience and the ability to command troops – and across the military, where changes have long been overdue. Among those sent to the reserve battalion were Oleksii Maistrenko, commander of the 11th Corps; Oleksandr Bakulin, commander of the 19th Corps; Andrii Malinovskyi, Commander of Rocket Forces and Artillery; and Oleksandr Nesterenko, Deputy Commander of the Ground Forces.
"Maistrenko found out he'd been dismissed from the media. Right in the middle of a meeting, during a video conference, he asked: 'Is it true that I'm being fired?'" people in one unit told UP several weeks ago.
"There is a reserve battalion for officers, and it's never been filled on anything like the scale we've seen over the past month and a half. Around 15 officers were dismissed from the General Staff's International Cooperation Directorate in a single day and transferred to the reserve battalion," another insider added.
Secondly, Drapatyi "rehabilitated" two officers who had been sidelined from commanding troops under his predecessors – Serhii Sobko and Emil Ishkulov.
In 2024, after a fairly successful stint with the Territorial Defence Forces Command, Sobko was abruptly exiled to the 11th Corps (towards the end of his time there, he publicly criticised micromanagement in the military). Ishkulov was sent to the 7th Air Assault Corps after refusing to take the 80th Brigade into Russia's Kursk Oblast without additional resources.
After taking office, Drapatyi brought Sobko into the General Staff, where he became acting Deputy Chief of the General Staff, and appointed Ishkulov commander of the 11th Corps, which is responsible for the defence of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
It remains to be seen whether Oleksandr Shyrshyn, the former battalion commander in the 47th Brigade who criticised the senior command over "idiotic missions in Kursk Oblast", will also be "rehabilitated". Those remarks not only cost him his post but also earned him enemies in one of the assault regiments.
So who has replaced the colonels and brigadier generals Drapatyi dismissed?
It's hard not to notice that a large number of senior positions, particularly in the Ground Forces, have gone to officers from the Air Assault Forces. They include Ishkulov, who now commands the 11th Corps; Valerii Skred, who took over the 19th Corps; and Sviatoslav Zaits, who became Commander of the Ground Forces.
Even the post of Chief of the General Staff went to an Air Assault Forces officer – Ihor Skybiuk.
Asked whether this was Drapatyi's own decision, one well-informed source replied succinctly: "Drapatyi was prepared to work with practically anyone who was suggested to him." Another source, however, cautiously hinted immediately after Skybiuk's appointment that it had been more of a compromise.
"With Syrskyi, he and Hnatov were basically a single unit. If Syrskyi went to the front, Hnatov would handle all the meetings in Kyiv and all the international meetings. It's not like that with Drapatyi and Skybiuk; their relationship is somewhat different," the source told UP.
Asked how much freedom Drapatyi has over personnel decisions, the well-informed source quoted above said that "no one is putting obstacles in his way". However, the fact that some officers are in their posts in an acting capacity rather than having been formally appointed calls that assertion into question, to say the least.
The mass "airdrop" of maroon berets [air assault officers] into senior positions was perceived by some military personnel, journalists and analysts as a concession to the paratrooper wing of the military. The theory was that the political leadership had appointed a commander-in-chief from the Ground Forces, but placated their Air Assault Forces rivals by making their representatives chief of the General Staff and corps and brigade commanders.
Our sources rejected this interpretation, however, insisting that it is purely a matter of professionalism and the aforementioned shallow bench.
"The paratroopers aren't bad. They're good. Who else are you going to choose?" was how a National Guard source summed it up.
Air Assault Forces officers were not the only ones to find the path to promotion opening up after Drapatyi's appointment. Younger brigade commanders have also moved up the ranks. Bohdan Shevchuk, commander of the 141st Brigade, for example, was appointed commander of the 20th Corps. Shevchuk has a rather controversial reputation within the military for his authoritarian leadership style, including from his time serving in the 68th and 59th Brigades. Serhii Shatalov, commander of the 37th Brigade, took over the 30th Marine Corps.
A handful of Drapatyi's colleagues from his previous job at the Joint Forces Command have also been promoted. Yurii Pohribnyi, who headed logistics at the Joint Forces Command, became the new and long-awaited commander of the Logistics Forces.
"Interaction between the Defence Ministry and the General Staff has improved significantly since Karpenko [the previous commander of the Logistics Forces – ed.] was dismissed – it's all lovey-dovey now," a Defence Ministry source told UP. "You can see they're determined to change everything, to sort out fuel [the defence forces have faced a huge fuel shortage in recent months – ed.], repairs and all sorts of other areas where there are major corruption risks."
Some members of the Joint Forces Command team, including communications and digitalisation personnel, also moved to Kyiv with Drapatyi and joined the commander-in-chief's staff.
"He hasn't changed over the past two months," one source who has worked with Drapatyi in various military structures for several years said with a smile. "He still greets everyone and asks how they're doing. He's very considerate."
One question that remains unresolved is the position of Commander of the Air Force – namely whether Anatolii Kryvonozhko, who has frequently come in for criticism, will remain in the job.
Insiders reminded UP that the Air Force has an even shallower bench than, say, the Ground Forces.
Unlike virtually all other branches of the military, which have been significantly replenished by people from civilian life since the full-scale invasion, the Air Force still remains a closed and largely unreformed system because it requires highly specialised knowledge and skills.
Another unanswered question is what will happen to Syrskyi's legacy – the assault regiments.
After his departure, the assault units found themselves in an extremely disadvantageous position: reinforcements were temporarily suspended, some personnel were transferred to other units, the regiments were placed under the operational control of various corps, and even Dmytro Voloshyn, the potential commander of the Joint Assault Forces which have not yet been set up, was sent back to the front.
What Drapatyi sees as a long-overdue response to the disproportionate expansion of the assault units (and, frankly, is common sense) has been met with outright hostility within those units. Among their rank-and-file soldiers, meanwhile, it has created complete uncertainty about what will happen next.
This was particularly true of those units that received no preferential treatment even before Drapatyi's appointment – the 1st and 475th Assault Battalions.
Several unrelated sources told UP that the commanders of these units had approached Drapatyi, emphasising their effectiveness and asking to operate with greater autonomy, but their requests had been turned down.
No final decision has been made on what will happen to the assault regiments or whether a Joint Rapid Response Forces Command will be created at all. For now, they remain temporarily assigned to the corps.
As far as Ukrainska Pravda is aware, the future of the assault units is not currently a top priority.
Meanwhile, commanders of non-assault units have told UP that since Drapatyi took over, they have noticed "a fairer distribution of personnel".
"Previously, all the brigades combined would get 10,000+ people a month, and all the assault units would get the same number. Now that's finally changed," one commander told us.
A thaw in the military command
The first word brigade and corps commanders use to describe Drapatyi's first few months in the job is "freedom".
Drapatyi has chosen a different approach to his predecessor, who would tell some brigade commanders how and where to fight – right down to the coordinates where they were supposed to establish a position. He has embraced decentralised command (mission command), moving away from the micromanagement that Syrskyi had become notorious for.
The сommander-in-сhief no longer commands troops directly, but does so, as the military hierarchy envisages, through the group of forces under the relevant Operational Command.
In civilian terms, it works roughly like this: employees are now given tasks by their line managers, and not the company director over the phone.
Since taking office, Drapatyi has reorganised the system of groups of forces somewhat.
He disbanded the Skhid (East) Group of Forces commanded by Viktor Nikoliuk – presumably because he was dissatisfied with Nikoliuk's performance – and merged Dmytro Voloshyn's Kursk Group of Forces into Mykhailo Shandar's Pivnich (North) Group of Forces.
There are now six groups of forces operating across the entire front.
Four have existed for some time: Pivnich (North), Pivden (South), Zakhid (West) and the Joint Forces Group. Two others were recently created by Drapatyi: Tsentr (Centre), commanded by Andrii Biletskyi, and Azov, commanded by Denys Prokopenko. They were put together on the fly.
It is these newly created groups that will have to fight the latest and particularly challenging battles in Donetsk Oblast – for the Kramatorsk urban area and for Dobropillia.
"The battle for Donbas is the number one priority for both us and them [the Russians – ed.]. We cannot withdraw from there," a senior source stressed in a conversation with UP.
Notwithstanding the critical comments that the sources interviewed for this article made about former commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, it is only fair to point out that he handed Drapatyi a front in considerably better shape than the one he himself inherited in 2024.
When Syrskyi took over from Valerii Zaluzhnyi, he had to stop an "avalanche" that was advancing from Avdiivka towards Pokrovsk at tremendous speed. Drapatyi, by contrast, took office with a relatively stable front, with the defence forces even holding the advantage on the battlefield in some areas.
Ukrainska Pravda sources say the corps reform launched by Syrskyi has played a major role in this. Not every corps has managed to develop into a strong formation, but the 3rd Corps, for example, has significantly improved the performance of the relatively weak brigades assigned to it, effectively retraining them in how to fight.
Military personnel joke among themselves that the "division" of Donetsk Oblast between Azov and the 3rd Corps will only intensify the years-long rivalry between the two formations in terms of both their combat record and the creativity of their media campaigns. The thinking is that each will want to deliver the best results.
"This is definitely an effective command decision, and we're already seeing the results," one officer told UP. "The brigades are amazed that someone is actually moving into the second line of defence behind them, that they haven't simply been abandoned."
"I know that both Biletskyi and Redis [Denys Prokopenko – ed.] have been given additional brigades. But just think how enormous the sectors they'll have to cover now will be. I think these groups of forces would be effective if they had no more than two or three brigades each," another commander said, voicing his concerns.
In the context of the reorganisation of the groups of forces and the situation on the battlefield, another front deserves particular attention: Zaporizhzhia.
One little-known fact is that this summer, former Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi pulled the command of the 7th Air Assault Corps away from the Dobropillia front and abruptly sent it to Volyn Oblast to repel a potential offensive from Belarus.
After taking office, Drapatyi reversed this decision and redirected the corps command to Zaporizhzhia (much to the relief of the 7th Corps, since, objectively speaking, there wasn't much for them to do in Volyn). The reason is that the Russians continue to build up forces near Huliaipole with the aim, according to UP information, of making a large sweeping manoeuvre from the town to form an encirclement around the city of Zaporizhzhia itself.
"We spent no more than two weeks in Volyn before coming to Zaporizhzhia," a source in the 7th Corps told UP. "We were tasked with reinforcing the Pivden (South) Group of Forces with another corps. Several brigades have been placed under our command, along with the 225th Assault Regiment. Overall, everything is good. The only issue is that we're here without our own complement of troops – we'd prefer to fight with our own units, because that means better coordination and greater effectiveness."
And the new groups of forces are unlikely to be the last innovation in the military command system.
Several of our sources said that Drapatyi, following the NATO model, wants to return the Joint Forces Command to its original purpose and put it in charge of the entire front.
At present the Joint Forces Command has a relatively small area of responsibility covering parts of Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts.
"The Joint Forces Command is supposed to command the war – that's what it was set up for," one colonel told UP. "Before the full-scale invasion, all exercises were conducted on the basis that the Joint Forces Command controlled all the groups. Then things went a bit off course, and later Syrok [Syrskyi – ed.], in order to undermine Drapatyi, broke up the Dnipro Operational Strategic Group altogether and turned it into a group of forces."
"The General Staff prepares reserves, handles strategic planning and works at the international level. The Joint Forces Command runs combat operations," added one corps chief of staff.
The move away from micromanaging brigades and corps has brought another change: Drapatyi no longer spends several hours every day hearing reports from every commander. This saves the сommander-in-сhief's time and prevents unnecessary dissemination of information.
"Syrskyi used to hear reports from everyone every day and might issue specific instructions on how the situation should develop, including where troops should advance. In other words, his focus was on overseeing the implementation of assigned tasks," one senior military officer told us.
"Drapatyi doesn't do that. It's the group commanders' job. Drapatyi's focus is on strategic and systemic issues.
And when commanders do speak to the сommander-in-сhief, he isn't interested in a standard report on 'what happened'. He wants statistics, an analysis of the problems and potential solutions – in other words, what conditions need to be created so that a particular commander can accomplish their mission. And that's the right approach."
The same officer added that Drapatyi is trying to get all commanders to use the Delta situational awareness system (yes, there are still some groups of forces in the Ukrainian military that don't) and requires them to make practical use of all the digital solutions available.
Changing the system
In its first few months, Drapatyi's team has turned its attention to several matters that may seem insignificant to civilians but are in fact fundamental to the military. These range from the 16 principles of leadership, which set out the framework for what the commander-in-chief expects of soldiers and officers, to the development of a military education reform spearheaded by Serhii Sobko.
However, in our view, another document deserves the most attention.
Two senior sources told UP that Drapatyi's team has drawn up what may be the first "war plan" of its kind. It has been under consideration by the National Security and Defence Council for several weeks.
This is precisely the kind of plan – a strategic vision – that commanders have regularly complained about not having in conversations with UP. How, they ask, can we move forward unless we understand the ultimate objective? If, for example, we want to retake Mariupol, when are we going to do it, and what are we going to do to achieve that?
"We need a grand strategy for the next 30 or so years so that we, as commanders, understand where we are heading," members of one corps command told UP.
The plan is intended to answer two questions: what exactly the Ukrainian military needs to do to preserve Ukraine, and within what timeframe.
Alongside these broader strategic issues, the plan also addresses more practical matters, such as the military's approach to defence. For example, whether it makes any sense to keep soldiers on the front line whose role is essentially to serve as the military's "eyes and ears", with virtually no ability to engage in combat.
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Drapatyi's first steps as a commander inspire respect and a natural curiosity: will he manage to rebuild the system? If not all of it, then at least a few of its layers – preferably those closest to the foundations.
The relatively stable front line, at least for now, gives him and his team time to make these changes.
Some things, however, certainly cannot wait – such as countering the Russian jet-powered drones that attack cities in the rear every day. The lack of a ready-made technical solution that can be deployed at scale will soon become part of Drapatyi's responsibility as well.
Given the intensity with which the Russians are currently attacking cities in the rear, it is reasonable to assume that over the next six months to a year, the war in the skies will demand significantly more time, effort and money than Ukraine has devoted to it in the past. And that raises the question: can a commander-in-chief who comes from the Ground Forces, and has always commanded the war on the ground, defeat Russia in the skies?
Olha Kyrylenko, Ukrainska Pravda
Translated by Myroslava Zavadska
Edited by Teresa Pearce