From Syrskyi to Drapatyi: Inside the military shake-up

“The Staff had to fend off calls,” the commander of an unmanned aerial vehicle unit said, joking.

While Ukrainian cities were swept by rallies, troops on the front line protested in their own way. Meanwhile, in central Kyiv, people with cardboard signs demanded the return of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov to his post and the replacement of Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi — citing assault regiments, the scandal in the 155th Brigade, and what they viewed as outdated approaches.

The president was forced to respond. While protesters' cries echoed near the windows of the Office of the President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy met on Bankova Street with corps commanders and military leaders.

Both the rear and the army froze in anticipation of changes. During those tense days, hromadske spoke with service members from various groups — those who hoped for transformations in the army and those whom the now-former commander-in-chief had brought into the military.

“If a person comes in and breaks at least a little of the system that Syrskyi built, I will be glad, because there is a number of officers who need to be put in their place, some removed, and some sent to a reserve battalion and not let out,” one former brigade commander said when the name of the new commander-in-chief was not yet known.

In the end, although the president did not meet the protesters’ demand to bring back Fedorov, he heard the name of the street’s favorite general. On the sixth day of protests, the Armed Forces of Ukraine received a new leader: Mykhailo Drapatyi. hromadske found out what the military themselves think about him and why he chose paratrooper Ihor Skybiuk as chief of the General Staff.

Syrskyi’s group

It would be unfair to say that everyone in the army was waiting for a new commander-in-chief. Part of the “old guard” whom Syrskyi had appointed to positions recorded public appeals in his support. As hromadske learned, some did so on their own initiative; others at the request of those above.

To be fair, there are officers in the army who sincerely support Syrskyi and recognize his authority.

“The man works his ass off 24/7. When you talk to him, you understand: he does not just know the direction in general, but specifically — who exactly is opposing, what needs to be reinforced. In military terms, he is not a fool at all. He carries the load and soldiers on. The man is doing a hard job,” another brigade commander who observed Syrskyi during the difficult battle for Pokrovsk told hromadske.

Ultimately, some commanders grew up in the army and moved up the ranks alongside General Syrskyi. One of them is the commander of the 19th Army Corps, Oleksandr Bakulin. He has known Syrskyi since 2019, from the moment Syrskyi was appointed commander of the Land Forces. Bakulin then headed the presidential regiment.

“I did not see any Soviet mentality in him at all. He is always available,” Bakulin said before it became known who the new commander-in-chief would be.

 “When they say that we constantly defend unnecessary positions, in the entire war, I turned to him three times with a request to withdraw personnel. All three times, he allowed me. So honestly, at this time, I do not see a better candidate than him. Yes, he is difficult. Maybe there is some commander whom everyone adores, but that is one hundred percent a bad commander. It means he has let discipline collapse so much that everyone does whatever they want.”

Late in the evening of July 21, Zelenskyy announced that changes would indeed happen, and the 43-year-old commander of the Joint Forces, Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi, would lead the army going forward.

“Drapatyi has high feedback from ordinary service members, it is a different culture of interaction, he will feel reality more, so for now we are giving him maximum space,” an interlocutor in the Office of the President explained the choice.

Drapatyi’s appointment was preceded by tense months of his interaction with military leadership. A hromadske source said that in the last two months, seven inspections had been conducted at the Joint Forces Command (JFC), and an eighth was about to come.

In addition, units were taken from Drapatyi’s direction, which weakened the grouping. And, as became known from Fedorov’s words, Syrskyi issued three reprimands to Drapatyi. With such a “biography,” the young major general takes over the army from Syrskyi.

New commander-in-chief

It is hard to hear bad reviews about Major General Drapatyi in the army. Most of those who know him, both privately and publicly, speak highly of him.

Oleksandr Vdovychenko, now head of the intelligence center of only the 11th Corps, served with Drapatyi in the 72nd Black Zaporozhians Separate Mechanized Brigade as far back as 2005. Both were in that same brigade at the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014.

On May 9, 2014, Drapatyi, who then commanded a battalion, helped a group of Ukrainian fighters escape from the encircled police building in Mariupol. That day, he was the crew commander of a BMP-2 IFV that, after clearing operations, was leaving the city and at speed flew over a barricade of militants. The video of the “flying” IFV made him famous.

At the beginning of August 2014, Vdovychenko met a column of Ukrainian fighters whom Mykhailo Drapatyi led out of encirclement from Chervonopartyzanske in Luhansk Oblast.

“So tired, but so unbreakable, so proud. And so thin. All the people who came out with him were also very exhausted,” Vdovychenko recalled. “There were more than 200 of them — from different units, they joined him. It seemed to me then that Mykhailo Vasyliovych was holding on only by willpower.”

Later, Drapatyi served as chief-of-staff of the 30th Brigade, and from 2016 as commander of the 58th Brigade. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, he led the defense of Kryvyi Rih, and later the liberation of the right bank of Kherson Oblast.

In February 2024, Drapatyi was appointed deputy chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, in May, the Russians broke through in northern Kharkiv Oblast, and he was sent to save Vovchansk. In the summer, he was already saving Chasiv Yar and Toretsk in the Luhansk Operational Tactical Group.

“They talk about Drapatyi as a firefighter or crisis manager,” Vdovychenko noted. “Where it was hard, there was Drapatyi. And it really is so: he was helped, he was given resources, he was heard, because Mykhailo Vasyliovych could complete the task and show results.”

In November 2024, Drapatyi became commander of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Later, he concurrently led the Khortytsia operational-strategic troop grouping and saved Pokrovsk.

Sharlotta Khmelnytska served with Drapatyi in the Land Forces Command; she is now the Chief Digital Transformation Officer (CDTO) of the Joint Forces Command. At the first meeting, Khmelnytska saw that Drapatyi does not tolerate incompetence and is fair to everyone.

“When necessary, he can be very demanding and very angry. I think that if it had been possible to record briefings of the Land Forces a year ago, he would have been the people’s commander-in-chief,” Khmelnytska said.

After Russian troops launched a missile strike on a training ground in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Drapatyi submitted his resignation. But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered him a new position — commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which Drapatyi held from October 2025.

Those who served with Drapatyi describe him as a very kind and empathetic person with whom it is pleasant to work. He knows soldiers’ names, can ask how the fighters are doing, or about their families.

“He always builds horizontal connections, is always open, and communicates directly with everyone — regardless of rank: soldier, sergeant, anyone,” Khmelnytska said.

“For him, it is important to understand the situation and hear everything firsthand. That is his superpower. I will not say that he is not strict — he is simply fair. He goes into contact, and he has no arrogance.”

Because of his too-kind character, some consider Drapatyi insufficiently strong-willed or even too weak for such a position. Others advised selecting stricter people for the team to balance his management style. Perhaps for this reason, paratrooper Ihor Skybiuk was chosen for the position of chief of the General Staff.

“The president may think that Drapatyi is too democratic and will not be able to be authoritarian when necessary. But that is not so — Drapatyi will be able to when it is needed,” one brigade commander who previously served under the new commander-in-chief noted.

Digitalization was actively developing in the Joint Forces Command, which is probably why Drapatyi found common ground with Fedorov. When the ex-minister came to the JFC, Drapatyi reported to him not with paper maps, but through Delta and dashboards.

“For any question from the minister, the dashboard gave an answer in a second: how much is mined, what percentage of crews are patrol service. You open the tab — and everything is visible,” Khmelnytska said. “We started using data as a weapon for the first time. He understands that this is one of the few chances to gain an advantage over the enemy, because we are constantly in conditions of limited resources. We simply have no other way out. That is why he looked for people and selected the team precisely on that principle.”

Now, Mykhailo Drapatyi can implement this experience across the entire army and build up technical advantages on the battlefield.

The first candidate for chief of the General Staff

After the announcement of the new commander-in-chief’s name, the intrigue remained over who would head the General Staff. The Presidential Office hesitated between two candidates — both generals were deputies to the then-chief of the General Staff, Andrii Hnatov.

“There were two options — Skybiuk and Horbatiuk,” the interlocutor in the Office of the President noted. “But they decided that Horbatiuk, because he was abroad, could delve a bit more into front-line affairs. And it turned out that Drapatyi and Skybiuk in 2022 were very close, almost in the same dugout. So Drapatyi considers this a good candidacy, and thanks Skybiuk for the support in the General Staff.”

As Drapatyi himself clarified, he and Skybiuk met in 2022 during the liberation of Kherson Oblast where they commanded the operation from one command post.

Unlike Drapatyi or even Skybiuk, Volodymyr Horbatiuk is a non-public general. He served as commander of the 1st Battalion and then chief-of-staff of the 72nd Brigade. He led the rotation of Ukrainian peacekeepers in Kosovo. In 2014–2015, he formed the new 54th Brigade.

“A powerful, strong-willed general, smart, of course, because he studied in the United States, has his own view. Generals of the new formation,” said Vdovychenko, who served with Horbatiuk in the 72nd Brigade.

Horbatiuk served as deputy chief of the General Staff under Hnatov, but he was not in Kyiv recently. He was sent to the headquarters of the NATO Initiative for Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU) in Wiesbaden, Germany.

“Now his work in the General Staff (overseeing operational management) is done by Skybiuk, and he was sent a bit further to NATO. It is unlikely this is a sign of closeness (to Syrskyi — ed.),” an interlocutor in the General Staff noted.

Despite the fact that most soldiers who served with Horbatiuk characterize him as a worthy officer, one interlocutor called his command style “the maximally toxic format of ‘I am the boss — you are a fool.’” He witnessed how, during the 2023 counteroffensive, Horbatiuk, sent by the General Staff to coordinate units, demanded breakthroughs with equipment through mined fields. The 78th Air Assault Regiment lost fighters in such assaults.

“It really reminded me of World War I, when we drove about 2 kilometers over the bodies of fighters from the 47th Brigade. Simply over bodies,” a soldier said.

“I was driving in a MaxxPro, behind me six M-113s, and I thought: ‘Thank God the guys do not see this.’ Because what kind of fight after that, when you have driven 2 kilometers over bodies of people lying 5 meters apart?”

According to him, Horbatiuk demanded sending column after column, even after fighters returned wounded or did not return at all. After another “why are you not moving forward?” from the general, a conflict arose between the then-regiment commander and Horbatiuk that nearly turned into a fight several times.

hromadske contacted the communications department of the General Staff with a request to provide Horbatiuk’s comment on the described situation. hromadske is also seeking comments from Syrskyi and Drapatyi on the information presented in the text.

Ultimately, another officer headed the General Staff.

Conservative paratrooper

For chief of the General Staff, Mykhailo Drapatyi chose Ihor Skybiuk and described him “as a commander whom one can trust in difficult circumstances and rely on his decisions, experience, and internal principles.” He, like Horbatiuk, was a deputy chief of the General Staff.

The 49-year-old Major General Skybiuk is a paratrooper. In the 80th Brigade, he rose from platoon commander to its head. Skybiuk became commander of the Air Assault Forces in 2014 and broke through with paratroopers into Kursk Oblast. After the Defense Forces withdrew from Sudzha, Skybiuk was sent to the General Staff.

Those familiar with Skybiuk describe him as a reserved paratrooper of the old type.

“It is hard to say for which war Skybiuk is relevant and whether the current one is not too new for him,” an interlocutor from the Air Assault Forces said.

The 80th Brigade remembers that he issued reprimands to fighters who wore non-regulation uniforms or boots, although he himself wore German LOWA footwear.

“This is a commander from the Air Assault Forces,” another interlocutor who crossed paths with Skybiuk during the Kursk special operation said.

“If he is given an order tomorrow to take Moscow and Moscow Oblast, he will say: ‘Yes, sir, allow me to execute.’ They are very systematic, and they have their own culture. But culture here is both a plus and a minus, because this culture presupposes the execution of any order, regardless of anything.”

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Ahead for Drapatyi and Skybiuk lies great responsibility and no lesser challenges. Together with acting Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara, they will have to decide what to do with mobilization, assault troops, and how to restore trust in the army.

“Definitely, it will be hard for Drapatyi. Now is really a difficult period,” Vdovychenko said, adding, “From Drapatyi’s appointment, Russia definitely has not won.”

That part of the Ukrainian army that had been waiting for changes has finally received them.

“Overall, this is probably the most winning option among those that were really possible. It was not in vain that people with cardboard signs came out; it did not happen by itself,” the commander of the unmanned aerial vehicle unit mentioned at the beginning of the text concluded.