Ukraine’s New Commander-in-Chief Was Forged on the Front Line

On 21 July, Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that General Mykhailo Drapatyi would become Ukraine’s new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Alongside him, the president announced a new configuration for the General Staff, which is also expected to include Yevhen Khmara and Pavlo Palisa. Oleksandr Syrskyi left the position of Commander-in-Chief, while the president separately stressed the need to ensure a proper handover and determine the next format of his service.

Formally, this is a personnel change. Politically, it is much more. Drapatyi’s appointment came at the end of a week of protests that began after the dismissal of former Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov and quickly evolved into a broader demand for changes in the military leadership. The protests lasted six days and gradually became a public signal that part of Ukrainian society, the military and veterans were no longer prepared to treat defence-related personnel decisions as an exclusively internal matter for the presidential administration.

Against this backdrop, Drapatyi emerged as a figure who brought together two different demands. For the military, he is a combat commander with experience leading forces on some of the most difficult sectors of the front. For supporters of reform, he is a general who has spoken publicly about the need to change the system rather than simply move people around within it. For protesters demanding Fedorov’s return, his appointment became evidence that the personnel crisis had ultimately forced the authorities to reconsider the configuration of military leadership.

But the real weight of Ukraine’s new Commander-in-Chief is not defined by the political week that preceded his appointment. It was built over twelve years of war.

The general who began with a breakthrough into Mariupol

Mykhailo Drapatyi was born on 21 November 1982 in Kamianets-Podilskyi. After graduating from the Kharkiv Institute of Tank Troops in 2004, he began his service in Ukraine’s 72nd Separate Mechanised Brigade. It was there that he built his reputation as a commander prepared to act directly on the front line.

In May 2014, Drapatyi commanded a battalion of the 72nd Brigade during the operation to liberate Mariupol. Footage of Ukrainian armoured vehicles breaking through barricades towards the city centre became one of the defining images of the early stages of the Russo-Ukrainian war. But behind that image was a far more complex military operation: Ukrainian forces were attempting to restore control over a city where Russian-backed forces had already seized several administrative buildings.

Several months later, his unit found itself among Ukrainian forces that, in the summer of 2014, had been cut off from the main forces and came under a massive Russian bombardment. Ukrainian troops were subsequently forced to break through territory controlled by Russian and Russian-backed forces.

Drapatyi led his units out of the encirclement. The experience — commanding amid the loss of communications, limited resources and the need to make decisions without any guarantee of support from above — became one of the defining elements of his military profile.

From brigade commander to a general who changed the battlefield

In 2016, Drapatyi took command of the 58th Separate Motorised Infantry Brigade. Under his command, the unit operated in the Donbas combat zone. He later held a series of command positions, gradually moving from brigade-level leadership to operational command.

His career differed from that of many officers who spend years within a single segment of the military system. Drapatyi worked successively with combat units, operational groupings, military training and staff command. This is important in understanding his current appointment: he arrives at the position of Commander-in-Chief not merely as a frontline commander, nor solely as a staff officer.

In 2022, Drapatyi commanded groupings in southern Ukraine. During counteroffensive operations, Ukrainian forces halted the Russian advance before moving forward several kilometres and liberating a number of settlements in Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

In the following years, he commanded operational groupings on different sectors of the front. One of the defining features of his command was the growing role of drones, electronic warfare and coordination between different branches of the military. For a Ukrainian army increasingly moving towards a technology-driven war, this was an important signal: a commander of the new generation must understand not only classical manoeuvre warfare, but also how the battlefield itself is changing.

Kharkiv and the moment Drapatyi was once again sent to the hardest sector

In May 2024, Russian forces launched an offensive in the Kharkiv direction. Ukrainian units in the region faced problems with preparation, coordination and command.

Drapatyi was appointed commander of the Kharkiv Operational-Tactical Grouping at a moment when Russian forces were already attempting to expand the offensive zone. His task was to stabilise the situation.

This was where one of the defining features of his reputation took shape: Drapatyi was seen as the commander sent in not when a situation had already been resolved, but when it needed to be fixed.

Following the change in command, Ukrainian forces stabilised the situation in the area and later conducted counteroffensive operations around Lyptsi. Drapatyi subsequently also commanded the Luhansk grouping, again working on a sector of the front under intense combat pressure.

In October 2024, he was promoted to the rank of Major General. In November, he was appointed Commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces.

The Ground Forces and an attempt to reform more than the front

Drapatyi’s appointment as Commander of the Ground Forces was significant precisely because the position required him to move from managing individual frontline sectors to working with the military system as a whole.

He spoke about the need to reform recruitment, improve military training and make it more relevant to the realities of the modern battlefield. He also called for technological modernisation and changes in management practices.

One of the most difficult challenges involved problems within individual brigades, including the 155th Mechanised Brigade. The situation revealed the scale of systemic problems that had accumulated within the Ukrainian army: inadequate training, difficulties with staffing, command and supply.

Drapatyi attempted to address precisely these problems. His approach was that problems could not simply be concealed in order to preserve the appearance of control. At the same time, this logic inevitably created friction with a system in which bad news is often perceived as a threat to the commander himself.

In January 2025, Drapatyi took command of the Khortytsia Operational-Strategic Grouping — one of the most difficult formations on the front. It was a return to direct command on one of the war’s most intense sectors.

Resigning after a strike on a training ground became the most important decision of his career

In June 2025, Drapatyi submitted his resignation from the position of Commander of the Ground Forces after a Russian strike on a military training ground killed Ukrainian soldiers.

His decision was unusual for Ukraine’s military system. Drapatyi effectively stated that he could not guarantee the proper implementation of his own orders and took responsibility for problems he had been unable to eliminate.

For an army in which commanders often remain in their positions even after serious failures, this carried particular weight. Drapatyi demonstrated what would later become a central element of his public position: a commander cannot separate authority from responsibility.

He did not disappear from Ukraine’s military leadership. He was appointed Commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It was in this position that he would later find himself at the centre of a new personnel conflict.

Drapatyi and Fedorov became an alliance that transformed the personnel crisis

When Mykhailo Fedorov took over the Defence Ministry, the process of change between the ministry and military command quickly moved beyond the boundaries of traditional bureaucratic reform.

Drapatyi became one of the few serving senior military commanders to publicly support Fedorov after his dismissal.

In a statement on 16 July, he said that the army needed change, but that without justice, such change would mean little to those fighting the war every day. According to the general, Fedorov’s team had attempted to change the rules under which the military system had operated for years.

Drapatyi specifically cited the “Drone Line” as an example of how a state decision could rapidly change the situation on the battlefield. At the same time, he said that many decisions had to be implemented “against the system rather than thanks to it”.

It was an exceptionally powerful statement. Drapatyi did not directly attack Syrskyi. But he described the problem at the centre of the conflict between military command and the Defence Ministry: should the system function because individual commanders have the courage to act — or should it be built so that the right decisions become the norm?

“When the right decision in the military has to be pushed through against the system, it means that the system itself needs change.” This position became something of Drapatyi’s political manifesto.

Why people supported him in the streets

After Fedorov’s dismissal, protests began across Ukraine. In Kyiv and other cities, people demanded his return as well as personnel changes in the military leadership. The protesters’ demands gradually crystallised into a short political formula: “Fedorov as minister, Drapatyi as Commander-in-Chief.”

The formula mattered as more than a political slogan. It showed that part of Ukrainian society had begun to see Fedorov and Drapatyi not simply as two officials, but as a team representing a different approach to the war.

Fedorov came to be associated with technological modernisation, digitalisation and an attempt to accelerate decision-making. Drapatyi represented frontline experience, military accountability and a willingness to speak publicly about systemic problems.

Their support among protesters was unusual for wartime Ukrainian politics. It did not come only from political parties or traditional political groups. Veterans, military personnel, activists and citizens took part in the mobilisation, demanding that defence-related personnel decisions reflect the actual needs of the war.

The protests cannot mechanically be described as the sole reason for Drapatyi’s appointment. The decision to change the Commander-in-Chief was the result of a broader conflict between different centres of influence within the defence establishment. But the political context was clear: Drapatyi’s appointment came after six days of street mobilisation and amid growing public demand for a reset of the military leadership.

Why Drapatyi

Ukraine has many combat generals. But Drapatyi possesses a rare combination of experience.

He commanded a battalion in 2014, when the war was just beginning. He experienced encirclement and breakthrough. He commanded a brigade. He led operational groupings. He stabilised the front in Kharkiv. He served in the Luhansk direction. He commanded the Ground Forces. He led one of the most difficult groupings on the front. After resigning, he returned to command the Joint Forces.

This is a career without one single episode that made him famous. His authority was built gradually — through different wars within the same war.

At the same time, his support is not unconditional. Drapatyi takes over as Commander-in-Chief at a moment when the Ukrainian army faces problems that cannot be solved simply by replacing one general: a shortage of personnel, the complexity of mobilisation, the exhaustion of units, competition between different centres of military command and the need to accelerate technological adaptation.

His greatest challenge lies in the fact that he spent years criticising the system of which he was himself a part. Now he will have to lead that very system.

Drapatyi has gained more than a position — he has gained a mandate to change the army

The new appointment has a distinctive political character.

Drapatyi became Commander-in-Chief after his name had already moved beyond the military chain of command. Military commanders supported him. His public position on reform aligned with the demands of protesters. His career gave him authority on the battlefield. And his conflict with the army’s systemic problems made him a symbol of a broader demand for change.

That is precisely why his first months in office will be particularly important.

Drapatyi will be expected to deliver more than battlefield victories. He will be expected to change the culture of command. To create greater accountability. To ensure that bad news travels upwards more honestly. And to improve coordination between the General Staff, the Defence Ministry and combat units.

In this sense, Drapatyi’s appointment is not simply a matter of replacing Syrskyi with another general.

It is an attempt to answer a question the Ukrainian army can no longer postpone: can a system built for an emergency learn to change faster than the war itself?

Drapatyi has been given the chance to prove that it can.

But with the position comes a far more difficult task — transforming his own battlefield authority into institutional reform. Because the Ukrainian army can no longer depend on whether a single commander has the courage to act against the system.

Mykhailo Drapatyi now leads that system.

Sources: Office of the President of Ukraine, Reuters, Ukrainska Pravda