One of Ukraine’s most senior military commanders discovered he had been sacked through media reports, the former head of Ukraine’s joint forces has said, as Kyiv emerges from its most intensive military leadership reshuffle of the nearly 2-year-old war.
“I learned about my dismissal from the post of commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which I’d held since 2020, from the mass media,” Lieutenant General Serhiy Nayev said in a post to Telegram on Sunday.
Nayev offered scant additional detail, adding that “the work is not finished, the war continues.”
In a presidential decree published on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that General Yuriy Sodol would take up the mantel as the head of Ukraine’s joint forces. He had previously served as the head of the country’s marines, Ukrainian media reported.
Newsweek has reached out to Ukraine’s presidential office for comment.
GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images
Zelensky has embarked on an extensive redesign of the country’s top commanders, beginning late last week. General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who had served as Ukraine’s top soldier throughout the almost 24 months of war, was removed from his post on Thursday, Zelensky confirmed in a statement.
“I am grateful to General Zaluzhnyi for two years of protection,” Zelensky said on February 8. “Starting today, a new management team will take over the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
Zaluzhny was replaced by the former commander of Ukraine’s land forces, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi. Major General Anatoliy Barhylevych has taken over as the chief of Ukraine’s General Staff, Zelensky said the following day. Several other senior commanders have been removed, according to a series of presidential decrees.
Zelensky had teased an impending restructuring, telling Italian broadcaster Rai News 24 on February 4 that Kyiv needed “a reset, a new beginning.”
“Now, people who are well-known in the army and who themselves know well what the army needs are taking on new responsibilities,” Zelensky said on Saturday.
The dramatic sweep of changes comes at a tough time for Kyiv, with Russian forces bearing down at numerous points along the front line after a stalled Ukrainian counteroffensive push through the summer and fall of 2023.
Russia’s creeping encirclement of the Donetsk town of Avdiivka since early October has yielded steady gains for Moscow, albeit at a cost of high casualties and significant equipment losses. The Kremlin is also pressing down on Ukrainian defenses further north along the Kharkiv and Luhansk front lines.
The shakeup was motivated by “the need to review the tactics of action, which did not fully ensure proper results last year,” Mykhailo Podolyak, one of Zelensky’s most high-profile advisers, said in a post to X, formerly Twitter. Ukraine must “prevent stagnation on the front line, which negatively affects public sentiment,” he said, and find new ways to give Ukraine the edge over Russia’s operations.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.