Ukraine Sacks Top Military Leaders as Results Hit 3-Year High
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Ukraine dismissed Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov on July 15 and replaced Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskii six days later, along with several lieutenants, in what the source calls the war's first simultaneous political and military leadership shake-up
- Russia's 2026 performance is its worst of the war, with 193,500 troops killed or seriously wounded and a net territorial gain of just 81.1 square kilometers, while Russia's war-economy growth has flattened at 0.2 percent, per Putin's own admission
- The core disagreement was over unmanned warfare: Syrskii created the Unmanned Systems Forces, whose FPV drones cause an estimated 95 percent of enemy casualties, while Fedorov pushed for even more aggressive drone procurement, even spending soldiers' payroll money to swell orders
- Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces have disabled 196 Russian fuel tankers and destroyed three-quarters of Russia's Kerch Strait ferry capacity since June 6, while striking 117 electrical substations and power stations this month, mostly in Crimea
- Ukraine's long-range strikes this week destroyed a Tupolev-95 strategic bomber at the Engels airfield 800 kilometers inside Russia, a MiG-29 at Khalino airfield in Kursk, the Slavneft-Yanos refinery in Yaroslavl, and four Wildberries warehouses used by Russian recruits to order gear
- Russia retaliated by targeting Ukraine's Black Sea port infrastructure, forcing Maersk to divert container traffic from Odesa and Chornomorsk to Romania's Constanta on July 22
- Russia has included ballistic missiles in almost every nightly strike since June 26, and while Ukraine intercepts 95 percent of drones and 87 percent of cruise missiles, it stops fewer than half of Russia's ballistic missiles, with Militarnyi suggesting Moscow is dipping into missile reserves
Why it matters: Ukraine's simultaneous ouster of its defence minister and commander-in-chief comes during its strongest three-year stretch — with Russian casualties at 193,500 and Russia's war economy growing just 0.2 percent — and the disagreement is over how fast to scale the drone strategy that now causes 95 percent of Russian casualties.
