The acting president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, kicked off this week with his ritualistic “reshuffling” of the government. It began with the dumping of his third Prime Minister (PM), Yulia Svyrydenko. She would have made it to a full year on Friday.
Since then, the man she replaced, Denys Shmyhal, has been reshuffled twice—as Defense and Energy Ministers, in that order. He was reportedly asked by Zelensky to revert back to Prime Minister for the reformulated cabinet, but he supposedly deferred. Presently, the head of the energy giant, Naftogaz’s Serhiy Koretskyi, is thought to be the front-runner.
Yesterday, Zelensky added to the controversy by dismissing Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, the darling of the drone warfare crowd, after only six months in office. U.S. neocon Michael McFaul—who had been at last Friday’s meeting between Zelensky and Lindsey Graham—had urged Zelensky not to dump Fedorov.
Zelensky told his Servant of the People faction, according to Ukrainska Pravda, that Fedorov has a systemic conflict with Oleksandr Syrskyi, Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, and with the armed forces, and that it has proved impossible to resolve. One attendee reported that Zelensky actually “said that, ideally, both Fedorov and Syrskyi should be dismissed, but he cannot do that now.”
As always with matters in Ukraine, issues of defense contracts and corruption may well be involved. Certainly, the EU-backed ‘anti-corruption’ bodies have taken to the streets today. There were reports that more than a thousand people were at a rally in Kiev’s central square, waving Ukrainian and European Union flags and reportedly chanting “shame” and “bring Fedorov back.”
UP reported: “The deputy director of the Politika thinktank, Artem Bronzhukov, on Radio NV described the rapid turnover of defense ministers in Ukraine as ‘abnormal’ in a country fighting a large-scale war against an enemy such as Russia.” Fedorov “is supported by our western partners, he is supported by the progressive part of society.”
Into this mix, outgoing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Kiev today for a personal meeting with Zelensky.
