Volodymyr Zelensky removed Mykhailo Fedorov as Ukraine’s defense minister on July 15, six months after parliament confirmed him. By 9:01 the next morning more than a thousand people were standing on Ivan Franko Square in central Kyiv with Ukrainian and EU flags, chanting “shame” and “bring Fedorov back,” the Kyiv Independent reported. Protests over the Fedorov dismissal followed in other cities.
The start time was chosen, not incidental. Ukraine observes a nationwide minute of silence for its dead at nine o’clock every morning. The organisers waited for it to end, then began.
Here is what the outrage has obscured: there was no swap. Ukraine is now fighting a full-scale war with the defense ministry vacant. Zelensky has put no name to parliament — he called Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko merely “one of the candidates” and noted that Klymenko had “not yet submitted the relevant documents to the parliament.” The Fedorov dismissal removed a minister without installing one.
Why soldiers and volunteers took the Fedorov dismissal badly
Fedorov, 35, had been with Zelensky’s team since 2019 as minister of digital transformation and deputy prime minister for innovation — the only minister to survive every reshuffle — before taking the defense job in January. He was an architect of Ukraine’s drone program and was credited with reform of the air defence sector. He was also the third person to hold the defense post in a year, after Rustem Umerov and Denys Shmyhal.
Sergeant Pavlo Kazarin of the 104th Territorial Defense Brigade called the decision “utterly baffling.” His objection was procedural rather than personal.
“If there had been complaints about Fedorov’s work and the ministry’s effectiveness during his tenure, this reshuffle would have been understandable. But there weren’t any.”
Veteran Dmytro Koziatynskyi, who called people to the square, put it in terms of timing: “The defense minister is being removed in the middle of effective — finally effective! — reforms, replaced by someone under whom any hope of reform can be forgotten.” He went further. “We will never defeat Russia as long as the same total stagnation and corruption rule our army and our ministries.”
Activist Serhii Sternenko was unequivocal: “Mykhailo Fedorov is the best Minister of Defense in our entire history.” Veteran Maria Berlinska named a cost. “The price will be the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of people,” she said. “Hundreds of thousands, if not more.”
The rift Zelensky pointed to
No formal reason was published. Zelensky pointed to a rift between the defense ministry and the military leadership, along with problems in mobilization and with draft officers. Reporting has centred the friction on Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, over reform, procurement and recruitment — a 35-year-old technologist against an army command with its own institutional habits.
Recruitment has been a live political wound for months, including the question of draft-age Ukrainian men abroad. Fedorov’s own brief had been to fix the war by other means — Ukraine’s drone effort has drawn heavy foreign investment, with Germany funding 50,000 strike drones.
Fedorov left without attacking anyone. “I will continue to work toward the mission I came to the Defense Ministry with — to defeat the enemy through asymmetry, the speed of innovation, and the strength of our organization,” he said.
A president answering the street
What happened next is the part worth marking. Zelensky did not dismiss the protest. Asked about it at a press conference on July 16, he acknowledged it directly: “So I understand, I hear and I even respond.”
Then he left the door open. “This is a question I am still considering,” he said. “I haven’t put the full stop yet.” He listed his priorities as dialogue between the army and the ministry, fixing recruitment, and “closing the sky.”
A wartime president under martial law, telling a crowd that had just called for his minister’s return that the decision is not final, is not a small thing. It is also not a reversal. Daria Kaleniuk, co-founder and executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, said she planned to join the gathering, Euronews reported.
What the empty chair costs
Ukraine’s defense ministry runs procurement, mobilization and the drone programme that has kept the country’s asymmetry alive against a larger army. Every day without a confirmed minister is a day those files sit with nobody accountable for them.
The protesters were not asking for less government. They were asking for the reforms to continue, which is a demand for a stronger state, not a weaker one. Parliament has not voted. The name has not come. Two days after the Fedorov dismissal, the loudest fact in Kyiv is an unfilled desk.
