Shared objectives, opposing reputations Why is Ukraine’s new top commander Oleksandr Syrskyi less popular than his predecessor?
On February 8, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces (AFU) Valerii Zaluzhnyi, with whom the president reportedly had a long-standing conflict. Zelensky appointed Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, as his replacement. While Zelensky’s team explained the decision as part of an effort to “renew the leadership” of the military, exactly how they expect Syrskyi’s approach to differ from that of his predecessor is unclear. In their rare statements over the past year, the two generals have said largely similar things. Their reputations, however, couldn’t be more opposite. Zaluzhnyi is widely associated with positive attributes such as tactical flexibility, care for soldiers’ lives, and prioritization of military needs over political demands; Syrskyi, on the other hand, is seen as someone who blindly follows orders, no matter the cost. Meduza explains what distinguishes the two on the battlefield, what goals they share, and how Syrskyi came to earn his reputation.
Zaluzhnyi and Syrskyi on the battlefield
Valerii Zaluzhnyi has become a symbol of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ (AFU) successes in the war with Russia. He led the AFU from the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and under his leadership, a “miracle” happened: in 2022, the Ukrainian army not only didn’t collapse but also managed to recapture a significant part of the territory lost in the initial attack.
However, the AFU lost a significant portion of southern Ukraine under his leadership — in the first days of the war, resistance there crumbed, Ukrainian troops lost their combat effectiveness, and some forces were surrounded in Mariupol. Ukraine’s Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the breakdown, but no charges have yet been brought against Zaluzhnyi (who formally bears responsibility for the training and movements of the troops).
Meanwhile, Oleksandr Syrskyi, as theater commander, led Ukrainian troops in the two most successful operations of the war’s first year: the defense of Kyiv and the offensive in the Kharkiv region. Near Kyiv, the AFU was able to halt the Russian army’s advance by using a flexible defense that combined infantry, tank, and artillery units. They attacked communications, which hindered the delivery of reinforcements and supplies to the Russian side, and displayed superior reconnaissance (using drones, among other things). In Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Syrskyi was able to covertly concentrate troops, predominantly light infantry, and break through the Russian line. Due to this maneuver, the AFU, which had inferior firepower, were able to defeat a large Russian formation.
It was shortly before Syrskyi’s Kharkiv offensive that the first — then not yet explicit — conflict arose between Zaluzhnyi and Ukrainian politicians. Russian troops tried to surround the AFU in Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, and Zaluzhnyi allegedly (this was reported by pro-Russian and anonymous Ukrainian channels) was in favor of abandoning these cities to minimize losses. However, in the midst of the battle in Lysychansk, Mariana Bezuhla, a member of parliament from the pro-presidential Servant of the People party, reportedly went to Lysychansk and practically took over the operation. The battle continued for another month, and Ukrainian troops in the almost surrounded Sievierodonetsk were left without supplies. Both cities had to be abandoned in early July. Following the battle (and the subsequent counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region), the Ukrainian authorities concluded that dragging out the doomed defense of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk was justified as it inflicted heavy casualties on Russian troops.
After Ukraine’s victory around Balakliya and Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, Syrskyi was sent to the only front where Russia was continuing its offensive: Bakhmut. Wagner Group was fighting there, reinforced by pardoned Russian prisoners. On January 9, 2023, Wagner mercenaries broke through near Soledar, north of Bakhmut, putting the Ukrainian defense in this direction in a critical position. Bakhmut sits in a lowland, and the elevated positions to the north of the city were captured by Wagner Group — but 10 kilometers (about 6.2 miles) west of the city, the AFU had a favorable position on the hills near the village of Chasiv Yar.
According to rumors spread by pro-Russian channels, Zaluzhnyi urged Zelensky at this point to give the order to withdraw troops from Bakhmut, but Zelensky refused — and Syrskyi was sent reserves to continue the defense. Since then, Zelensky has often appeared on the Bakhmut front accompanied by Syrskyi. However, there’s no independent corroboration that Zaluzhnyi was against continuing the defense. A month before Soledar fell, he told The Economist that the AFU’s main objective was to hold off the next Russian offensive and to not surrender an inch of territory as “liberating it will be much more difficult.” Already then, at the end of 2022, rumors began spreading that Zelensky’s entourage wanted to replace Zaluzhnyi, who was popular among both civilians and troops, with Syrskyi.
It wasn’t possible to hold Bakhmut. However, a few days before its fall, in early May 2023, the AFU began launching counterattacks on the flanks of Wagner Group’s formation. Syrskyi announced that Bakhmut would be liberated. The attack on the city was led by experienced Ukrainian brigades, including ones that had defended Bakhmut in the spring as well as fresh ones specifically placed under Syrskyi’s command. Concurrently, the AFU launched an offensive in the south, toward Tokmak and Melitopol, using newly formed and inexperienced brigades. Western military leaders consider the decision to disperse military forces in two unrelated directions like this to have been a mistake by the Ukrainian command. Bakhmut was never liberated, and the southern offensive also failed. It’s not entirely clear who came up with the idea to divide the troops — Zaluzhnyi, Zelensky, or Syrskyi.
It’s generally believed that after the offensive’s initial failures, Zaluzhnyi altered the operational plan: reserves, which were originally meant to come in as reinforcements after a breakthrough, were brought into the battle before any such breakthroughs occurred. Additionally, the AFU switched from large-scale armored attacks to assaults with small infantry units. This yielded only minor tactical successes; for instance, the village of Robotyne, a few kilometers from the original front line, was liberated. It’s worth noting that the tactic of using small assault groups was not Zaluzhnyi’s invention for operations in Ukraine’s south. Syrskyi employed the same approach near Bakhmut, and, prior to that, Wagner Group (which generally preferred not to use armored vehicles on the contact line) used the same strategy.
In November, when it was already obvious that the offensive had failed, and the Russian Armed Forces began launching attacks across the entire front, Zaluzhnyi wrote an essay for The Economist. Despite its title (“The commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces on how to win the war”), he didn’t provide any clear plan for victory — instead, he mainly wrote a routine analysis of military technology and expressed his hope for some new resources in critical areas. However, the general did give his opinion of what would happen if the new resources didn’t appear: the war would ultimately become a war of attrition, and in this type of conflict, Ukraine would eventually lose.
To the president’s team, this sounded like a political statement — if victory on the battlefield isn’t attainable, then the war’s objectives must be changed. Meanwhile, Zelensky’s office kept insisting that the only acceptable outcome for Ukraine would be the liberation of all of its occupied territory, including Crimea.
In late January of this year, the German outlet Bild wrote that Zaluzhnyi had asked Zelensky to withdraw troops from the semi-encircled Avdiivka but that Zelensky had refused, despite the critical situation there. Still, there was no actual evidence showing that Zaluzhnyi had, or had expressed, a dissenting opinion. Earlier, he’d said that Avdiivka could be lost within a few months.
Zaluzhnyi and Syrskyi’s methods
Both generals, according to political and military leaders in Ukraine, share similar views on war and the military. They both advocate for moving away from “Soviet legacies” by decentralizing command structures, placing trust in lower-ranking commanders as an alternative to rigid hierarchies, and adopting NATO-style command structures where politicians, including those in the Defense Ministry, focus on policy while military personnel lead combat operations.
Zaluzhnyi has put more emphasis on the need for commanders to possess leadership qualities and to be “father figures to their soldiers.” Meanwhile, Syrskyi, as described by his associates, is particularly “meticulous in planning operations and sees warfare as mathematics.”
Both have gone from being optimistic about the prospects for Ukraine’s summer offensive to realizing that the AFU must now put up a steadfast defense. Shortly before Zaluzhnyi left his post, he told CNN that the AFU should rely on kamikaze drones, which can be produced domestically, as a replacement for artillery. Syrskyi echoed the sentiment upon succeeding Zaluzhnyi.
Despite their similar approaches and rhetoric, as well as their shared victories and setbacks, the generals have one significant difference: their reputations. Judging by public opinion polls and statements from military personnel, Zaluzhnyi remains a symbol of all Ukrainian victories. Syrskyi, on the other hand, has a reputation among the military as a cold-hearted executor who will be loyal to any governing authority and has little regard for his personnel.
A Ukrainian general told Meduza the following about the country’s new army chief:
I won’t comment on Syrskyi. It’s clear he’s not just anyone off the street. Ideally, his methods would be more technologically advanced, rather than just carrying out the orders of the office [of the president] at any cost. That’s exactly why he was appointed — because he executes the office’s orders at any cost. There were no logical reasons for Zaluzhnyi’s dismissal. It’s the result of ‘political jealousy,’ which certainly doesn’t unite society in difficult times. We usually say: ‘We know our problems; we’ll sort them out after the war.’ But here, I’m afraid, we won’t win the war without solving these problems.
A source within the Ukrainian military said Syrskyi was callous:
The soldiers and I are a little shocked. Because many see Syrskyi as a ‘butcher.’ He doesn’t care about losses. When he arrives at some front, reserves, including untrained ones, start being brought in — and they push, push, push. Zaluzhnyi is known in the army as someone who always tries to carry out orders with minimal casualties. Yes, he could lose territory, regroup, request other units. But Syrskyi doesn’t care about losses at all. He only cares about following the [president’s] orders. And they say he never challenges the directives he gets from above. And this is why Zaluzhnyi was inconvenient — according to what the infantry says in the trenches. Because he always had his own opinion, and, as a military man, he often spoke up against various operations.
However, Zelensky’s team believes that these ideas were artificially introduced into public opinion and that Syrskyi is the victim of slander, if not Russian psychological warfare. Here’s how a source in Kyiv who’s familiar with the situation characterized it to Meduza:
Half of this information [about Syrskyi’s indifference to troop losses] is a well-executed psychological operation. Infantrymen are the main target of all Russian psy-ops. [Few know about his actual qualities as a commander because] the army as a whole didn’t serve under Syrskyi’s command. Only a certain section of people did, and a fairly small one. But now, this image will disintegrate on its own, because he will simply stop planning operations in this way — for objective reasons.
Syrskyi’s reputation
Oleksandr Syrskyi first entered the public’s awareness in the spring of 2015 as major general and chief-of-staff of Sector “C” in Ukraine’s “Anti-Terrorist Operation” in the Donbas. Shortly before that, from late January to February 20 of the same year, he directly oversaw Ukrainian combat operations in the so-called Debaltseve pocket.
General Valerii Zaluzhnyi (as deputy commander of the sector) and Serhiy Shaptala, a future loyal ally of Zaluzhnyi’s, served under Syrskyi’s command there. Shaptala was in charge of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, which formed the basis of the defense at Debaltseve. Zaluzhnyi would later recall how he led the 25th Territorial Defense Battalion “Kyivska Rus” in Debaltseve “with a heavy heart.” Debaltseve was already partially surrounded before the “LNR/DNR militias” attacked, and there was only one supply road.
In mid-February, the Debaltseve garrison was surrounded (the road was reportedly cut off by regular Russian troops from Russia’s 5th Guards Tank Brigade). On February 12, under the pressure of these circumstances, then-President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed the Minsk II agreement, which was considered a humiliation for Ukraine. On February 18, the majority of Ukrainian troops in Debaltseve, including the 128th Brigade and the 25th Battalion, fought their way back to Ukrainian-controlled territory through the fields and hills north of the city. Kyiv recognized the operation as a success and gave awards to the participants, including Syrskyi and Shaptala.
Afterward, one of the 25th Battalion officers, Yevheniy Bekrenev, took a letter signed by various soldiers to the Military Prosecutor’s Office in Kyiv, accusing Poroshenko and his “faithful executor” Syrskyi of critical mistakes (or even deliberate betrayal) when leading the operation in Debaltseve. The letter was signed by Shaptala, who later denied having signed anything. Bekrenev was accused by Ukraine’s Security Service of assisting Russia and working for its special services, but the case didn’t lead to his arrest.
After this, Syrskyi became a popular target for Poroshenko’s opponents. Bekrenev became a commentator and continued to “expose” the general, outlining in more and more detail his “crimes” in Debaltseve. Perhaps due to this reputation, Syrskyi’s military career advancement stalled after Zelensky came to power, and it was ultimately not him but his former subordinate Zaluzhnyi who was appointed commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces in 2021.
Since then, the type of defense used in Debaltseve has firmly taken root in Ukrainian tactical planning: holding disadvantageous positions at all costs, with the belief that the troops will manage to inflict losses on the enemy and then break through to get back to Ukrainian-controlled territory. This type of strategic defense was used in Mariupol, near Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, and in Bakhmut — and is now being employed again in Avdiivka. Naturally, its effectiveness remains a matter of debate: troops have to fight with limited supplies (or without them at all, as in Mariupol), which likely reduces their combat capability. Additionally, what happened at Bakhmut shows that such operations do not always yield political dividends. Heroic defense followed by defeat may not be enough for society; what’s really necessary are lasting victories.
Zelensky’s team is taking a risk by appointing a person who, while a master of unwavering defense (which is precisely what Ukraine needs now), has (deservedly or not) a reputation as someone who puts the leadership’s political interests over military considerations. The president’s office and its not-so-popular appointee could easily find themselves magnets for all the negativity that will inevitably arise during the difficult times promised to Ukraine in 2024 — a particularly important consideration given the looming need for expanded mobilization.
Reporting by Meduza’s Analysis department and special correspondent Elizaveta Antonova