Thousands of Ukrainians protest against Zelenskyy’s firing of popular defence minister

Deputy air force commander resigns as president faces backlash over decision

Volodymyr Zelenskyy faced a rising backlash on Thursday over his move to fire the popular defence minister, as thousands protested outside the president’s office, a senior air force commander resigned and ruling party lawmakers warned they lacked the votes to approve his candidate.

The backlash marked one of the most significant public displays of dissent against Zelenskyy since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. It has exposed rare divisions within his parliamentary majority, which had largely rallied behind his wartime leadership and rubber-stamped his cabinet nominees.

At the heart of the dispute is the removal of defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who is credited with accelerating weapons procurement, drone production and reforming the notoriously opaque and bureaucratic ministry. His ministry’s innovative use of mass-produced drones is seen as having helped slow the advance of its larger, better-resourced opponent in recent months.

Fedorov was only appointed in January but Zelenskyy told lawmakers that the 35-year-old and Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top general, could not overcome their differences to work together, several MPs from the president’s faction told the FT.

Defence industry officials, senior Ukrainian officials, MPs from Zelenskyy’s party and others familiar with the matter have also said — some publicly — that Fedorov had been a barrier to interests seeking to profit from Ukraine’s vast wartime defence budget.

As of Thursday morning, it remained in doubt as to whether MPs would vote for the new cabinet. Ruling party lawmakers told the FT the mood in parliament was “explosive” and that many had decided not to vote for Ihor Klymenko, the president’s new candidate for defence minister.

“Right now there are not enough votes,” one of the MPs said.

One MP, Mykyta Poturaiev, resigned in protest.

Zelenskyy is now engaged in talks with his chief of staff, co-ordinating a path out of the turmoil, aides to the president said.

The protest comes almost exactly a year after Zelenskyy’s attempted power grab to strip Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies of their independence and subordinate them to his handpicked prosecutor-general. At the time, parliament rubber-stamped the legislation but was forced to quickly backtrack after public uproar and the first mass protests since the full-scale war began. 

Much of the pressure then fell on Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s then-chief of staff, who resigned in November. This time, it is more squarely focused on Zelenskyy himself.

On Thursday, demonstrators turned out on the same public square outside the president’s office where they had forced Zelenskyy to change course last year. They carried signs demanding that Fedorov remain in office, chanting “Fe-do-rov!” and “We’re not suckers!” and “Shame!”

“This is what happens when you take people’s hope away from them,” said Ksana Nechyporenko, a demonstrator working in Ukraine’s drone industry.

Pavlo Yelizarov, a renowned drone unit commander, resigned as deputy leader of the air force in protest, writing that the decision to oust Fedorov would do “a great evil for the country’s defence capability”.

Ukraine’s parliament was also expected to vote on a new prime minister on Thursday morning in a sweeping cabinet reshuffle — Zelenskyy’s third in the space of a year — intended to re-energise the wartime government.

The candidate for prime minister, Sergii Koretskyi, chief executive of state-owned oil and gas company Naftogaz, is seen as a highly capable manager who helped Ukraine weather the brutal last winter. Zelenskyy had tasked him with repeating the feat this year.

But the anger over Fedorov’s removal has cast doubt on those plans.

Lawmaker Vadym Halaichuk said Zelenskyy had told them that Fedorov “came into conflict with the military command and the conflict couldn’t be resolved by mediation. And you can’t just dismiss the military command now.”

“Fedorov and Syrsky were not on speaking terms,” said another ruling party MP present in the meeting with the president. “You can’t have a defence minister and your top general not speaking during a war.”

A third MP said Zelenskyy blamed Fedorov for failing to reform a messy mobilisation system that has become one of the government’s most politically sensitive challenges and has fuelled public outrage over heavy-handed conscription practices.

Another lawmaker in Zelenskyy’s party called the situation “very sad” and “a blow to the image of the new government”.

MPs told the FT that Koretskyi’s speech in parliament on Thursday was uninspiring and weak, “a bunch of platitudes and empty slogans”.