Fedorov is credited for SpaceX disabling the Starlink terminals Russian forces relied on<\/a>, and launched<\/a> fixed-term contracts and higher infantry pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is criticism<\/a> too, the reforms were slow to show results and mobilisation did not improve. But from the outside, this was clearly a minister who delivered.<\/p>\n He also pushed to replace the top command that soldiers blame for costly, top-down decisions: commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi and the chief of the general staff, Andrii Hnatov.\u00a0<\/p>\n President Volodymyr Zelensky kept the generals and removed the reformer.<\/p>\n The reformer and the generals<\/p>\n By the end, the fight with Syrskyi was in the open. <\/p>\n Fedorov said decisions were being made on loyalty, not data<\/a>, and that his initiatives had been blocked for months. His hardest line went at the commander-in-chief directly: Syrskyi’s job was to defeat Russia asymmetrically, and instead, Fedorov said, “he figured out how to split the country<\/a>.”<\/p>\n Why exactly he was removed is contested, and the fair account gives Zelensky his reasons. A president cannot let his defence minister and his top general wage open war while mobilisation falters.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then there is what reforms cost others. Fedorov had moved procurement to competitive tenders<\/a> and put contractors through polygraphs, firing those who failed and saving more than $100m [\u20ac87m] on one artillery contract.\u00a0<\/p>\n That made him some enemies. <\/p>\n People familiar with the matter told the Financial Times<\/a> he had blocked attempts to steer lucrative contracts to favoured firms. Zelensky offered him an advisory role, but Fedorov turned it down<\/a>. So he lost the job where he was building a system.<\/p>\n An advantage measured in speed<\/p>\n The first crack showed within a day. <\/p>\n Colonel Pavlo Yelizarov, deputy air force commander, brought in by Fedorov to rebuild short-range air defence, resigned<\/a> on Thursday (16 July), refusing to serve again even in the reserve. <\/p>\n Fedorov’s removal, he wrote, is “a great evil for the country’s defence capability” that will get Ukrainians killed under Russian missiles.\u00a0<\/p>\n A single resignation does not break an air defence, but it shows the reshuffle already bleeding the specialists who were rebuilding one.<\/p>\n Ukraine’s edge was never a stock of drones. It was speed: the ability to field and replace methods faster than the enemy can adapt. That tempo is being closed in on. Russia is copying the model, and Ukraine’s own drone-force commander says Moscow is standing up a force 100,000 strong<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some of its personnel, instructors included, were trained in China<\/a>. The edge holds only as long as Kyiv reforms faster than its methods are absorbed, and reform lives in procurement authorities, approval cycles and the people who run them. <\/p>\n Remove the official who had begun aligning them around one reform model, and the risk is that the cycle stretches back out.<\/p>\n For the first time since last summer’s anti-corruption protests, thousands filled the streets<\/a> the morning after the firing, in Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa and Dnipro. Fedorov himself said<\/a> the crowds had not come out for a minister but because the momentum they could see in the sky was breaking.<\/p>\n Europe’s stake<\/p>\n For Europe this is not distant palace drama. <\/p>\n In his final days in office, Fedorov signed<\/a> the agreements opening EU programmes, funding and joint production to Ukrainian firms. <\/p>\n The day before he was fired, he stood with the European Commission and the European Defence Agency in Kyiv to name the first six European companies, from Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Germany, Finland and France.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/TBEN0797-copy-600x400.jpg\")
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