Ukraine fights under an interim defense chief after Zelenskyy’s contested government shake-up | International

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s major shake-up of his government on Thursday, which included the dismissal of Mykhailo Fedorov as defense minister and the appointment of a new prime minister, unsettled the country’s military leadership and triggered a public outcry. It tested Zelenskyy’s authority and was an unwelcome difficulty after Ukraine in recent months gained traction in the war.

Zelenskyy said he had asked Maj. Gen. Yevhen Khmara, acting head of the state’s security service and a highly regarded special operations expert, to take over the defense minister’s duties.

Zelenskyy said late Thursday he would ask Parliament to formally approve Khmara’s appointment as defense minister, as required by law.

That step could be delayed by bureaucratic hurdles, however. Ukrainian law requires the defense minister to be a civilian, so a serving soldier or security service officer must leave active duty before being formally appointed. Also, lawmakers will be on summer recess through mid-August.

It was not clear whether Khmara would have enough votes in Parliament to be confirmed in the job.

Relations between 35-year-old Fedorov and Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the 60-year-old commander of Ukraine’s armed forces who started his military career in the former Soviet Union, had broken down, according to Zelenskyy, and made Fedorov’s position untenable.

“We transformed Ukraine into a global tech leader and a defense powerhouse,” he said Friday on social media.

The surprise departure of Fedorov, a youthful, digital-savvy modernizer, drew thousands of people to demonstrate against his dismissal in cities across Ukraine on Thursday.

Further street protests took place in Kyiv on Friday, where one sign read, “Don’t ruin something that works.”

“I don’t think they should replace an effective leader and manager like Fedorov,” Olha Horoshkova, one of the protesters, told The Associated Press.

She said her father has been serving in the armed forces since 2022 and told her he has seen “noticeable changes” under Fedorov.

“There’s a little less bureaucracy now, and things have genuinely become easier,” she reported her father saying.

Another protester, Yehor Pohrebniak, said army chief Syrskyi had had some notable triumphs during the war.

But he added: “Syrskyi’s vision of war is already outdated, because war is changing very rapidly … We need more technological solutions.”

Khmara, tapped by Zelenskyy to replace Fedorov, has been in charge of the SBU security service since January.

He had previously led the SBU’s elite Alpha special forces unit and is known for being an architect of Operation Spiderweb, one of Ukraine’s most spectacular attacks when it struck Russian air bases last year.

He joined the Alpha unit in 2011 and became its commander in 2023 before being promoted to major general the following year.

Moscow’s response to its recent battlefield difficulties and Ukraine’s targeting of Russian oil facilities, which has caused severe fuel shortages, has focused in part on relentless strategic bombing of civilian areas of Ukraine.

Russian attacks on Ukraine overnight killed at least four civilians and wounded 20 other people, Zelenskyy said.

Two people were killed and 10 others injured, including children, in a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa, regional military administration head Oleh Kiper said. One of those killed was a woman who had been walking in a park with her children, who survived, he said.

In the Zaporizhzhia region, two people were killed and five were injured in a strike, according to Zelenskyy. He said three people were injured as a result of Russian shelling in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

Officials said more people were injured in Russian strikes on five other regions of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 243 Ukrainian drones overnight into Friday.

Three civilians were killed and seven others injured in Ukrainian drone attacks over the previous 24 hours, according to Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-appointed head of the Russia-occupied part of Ukraine’s Kherson region.

Ukrainian drones struck 12 Russian vessels in the Black Sea overnight, Robert “Madiar” Brovdi, head of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said Friday. The vessels included nine dry cargo ships, one tanker, one gas carrier and one tugboat, according to Brovdi.

Ukrainian forces struck 159 Russian vessels in the Black and Azov seas over the past 12 days, he said, in its campaign to stop Russian shipping.

Ukrainian forces also destroyed a Russian Tu-95 strategic bomber in Engels, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the Ukrainian border, Zelenskyy said.