Just as reports from the front lines in Ukraine are giving Volodymyr Zelensky some reasons to be cheerful, his government has descended into turmoil. Within a matter of days he sacked his defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, before having to fire his commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi.
Fedorov’s dismissal was very much Zelensky’s decision. Syrskyi’s, however, appears to have been forced on the Ukrainian president, after hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across Ukraine to protest the departure of the defence minister. Fedorov is widely credited with masterminding the success of Ukraine’s drone strategy, which, apart from helping to even up the odds on the front lines, has wreaked havoc inside Russia and Crimea.
