Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Tuesday the dismissal of army commander Oleksandr Syrsky, whom he replaced with the popular commander of the joint forces, Mykhaïlo Drapaty, amid discontent after the departure of the Defense Minister.
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“I have decided that the new commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be Mykhailo Drapaty… I thank Oleksandr Syrsky and all our fighters for Ukraine’s strong front-line positions,” Mr. Zelensky said Tuesday evening in a message on Telegram.
Oleksandr Syrsky, 60, had held this position since 2024. He notably led the defense of kyiv at the start of the Russian invasion in 2022.
His dismissal comes after several days of demonstrations in support of Defense Minister Mykhaïlo Fedorov, ousted on July 14 after only six months in office.
He accused Mr. Syrsky of having pushed him towards the exit and of having hindered his attempt to reform the army.
Mykhaïlo Fedorov, 35 years old, from the world of tech and having never served in the army, campaigned for a massive use of new technologies to increase the potential of drones and fundamentally reorganize the armed forces.
The dismissal of General Syrsky breathes “a breath of fresh air” and “new hope” into the fight against Russia, Mr. Fedorov immediately reacted.
Born in Russia and trained in Moscow, Oleksandr Syrsky never managed to shake off his reputation as a general with a Soviet mentality: his detractors accuse him of paying little attention to human losses, earning him the nickname “butcher”.
Civilians killed
This upheaval at the head of the Ukrainian army comes as the number of civilians killed or injured increased by 37% over the first six months of this year, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights warned on Tuesday.
“We recorded 1,396 civilians killed and 7,978 injured” in the two countries, which “represents an increase of 37% compared to the same period of the previous year, and almost double the level observed in 2024,” Danielle Bell, representative of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, told the press in Geneva.
More than four years after the start of the large-scale Russian offensive against Ukraine, strikes on both sides of the front are gaining momentum and causing an ever-increasing number of civilian casualties.
In Russia “during the first six months of this year, we recorded, based on information from open sources in the Russian Federation that we consider credible, 250 civilians killed and 1,596 injured. This represents an increase of 121% compared to the same period last year, Ms. Bell added from kyiv.
According to her, “this escalation is fueled by two main factors: on the one hand, long-range ballistic missiles and drones and, on the other hand, short-range drones and glide bombs used in front areas.”
Thus, civilian casualties in the two countries “due to attacks carried out by short-range drones increased by 65%,” she added.
Black Sea strikes
Furthermore, during the night from Monday to Tuesday, a strike against a ship in the Black Sea transporting propane to the Ukrainian port of Reni caused a major fire on board off the Romanian coast, injuring three sailors and forcing the crew to evacuate.
Two Romanian rescue ships intervened to evacuate the 17 crew members, three of whom “required emergency medical treatment”, according to the rescue services.
While authorities are still working to determine the origin of the strike, Romanian President Nicusor Dan said the incident was “most likely linked to the illegal war of aggression waged by the Russian Federation against Ukraine.”
The ship was carrying more than 3,790 tons of propane from the Egyptian port of Alexandria.
The Black Sea has regularly been the scene of confrontations between Ukraine and Russia since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.
Also on Tuesday, India summoned the Russian charge d’affaires in New Delhi, Vladimir Ladanov, to protest an attack carried out over the weekend on a cargo ship leaving the Ukrainian port of Odessa, on the Black Sea, which cost the lives of four Indian nationals.
