Zelenskyy outlines tasks that new commander-in-chief and acting defence minister will have to tackle
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that new Commander-in-Chief Mykhailo Drapatyi and acting Defence Minister Yevhenii Khmara will together have to carry out the key tasks that their predecessors also faced – "closing the skies" and making reforms in the approach to mobilisation.
Source: Zelenskyy at a press conference with Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin in Kyiv on 23 July
Quote: "Undoubtedly, both Drapatyi and Khmara will have to fulfil the main task facing us today after a long and exhausting war for everyone. The tasks that I set for both [Mykhailo] Fedorov and [Oleksandr] Syrskyi (because you can't separate them, nor can we say that one is to blame and the other is not) were the issue of 'closing the skies', the issue of how military enlistment offices are run and the issue of giving mobilisation a more human face, if I can put it that way. Until the war ends, all of this will have to be done together, in unity. Unfortunately, that unity did not exist before."
Background:
- Protests were held in Kyiv and other cities every day from 16 to 21 July, with demonstrators demanding that Fedorov be reinstated as defence minister and that Syrskyi be dismissed as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
- Zelenskyy acknowledged that Fedorov and Syrskyi had been unable to find common ground and that problems on the battlefield, within brigades and with mobilisation remained unresolved.
- Following six days of protests, Zelenskyy announced his decision to dismiss Syrskyi as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and appoint Mykhailo Drapatyi to replace him.
- Ex-serviceman Dmytro Koziatynskyi, who had previously been calling on people to protest against the then commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, urged Ukrainians to join a protest in Kyiv on 24 July demanding that Fedorov be reinstated as defence minister.
- On 22 July, people also took part in protests in support of Fedorov.
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