After days of protests, Volodymyr Zelensky acquiesced to demands to sack his military’s commander-in-chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, and replaced him with the much younger Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi, who enjoys a formidable battlefield reputation.
Sirskyi, 60, appointed in 2023, was credited with forcing Russian forces to retreat from their attempt to capture the capital, Kyiv, at the start of Moscow’s February 2022 full scale invasion. Later that year, he masterminded a surprise offensive that routed Russians occupying large swathes of territory in Ukraine’s north eastern Kharkiv region.
