On February 8, 2024, President Volodymyr Zelensky met General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, posted a photograph of the two men, and thanked him for two years of defending Ukraine. A little later he made Oleksandr Syrskyi, who had run the land forces, his new top commander. It was the biggest shake-up of the military since the full-scale invasion began.
The official reasoning was short. In an eight-minute video, Zelensky said “this is not about names” and “not about politics.” He wanted a new approach to mobilisation and fresh management of the army. His adviser Mykhailo Podolyak put it more bluntly: the expectations for 2023 had not been met, and the front was in “stagnation.”
The catch is that Zaluzhnyi was popular, and the Guardian called firing him a risky move. Details of an earlier meeting, where the president asked him to resign and he refused, had leaked about ten days before. Opposition MP Volodymyr Ariev, from Petro Poroshenko’s party, said he worried the army would be demoralised by a dismissal with no real explanation. Some observers suspected Zelensky feared a future rival.
The résumé
Born in 1965 in a village in Russia’s Vladimir region, Syrskyi trained in the 1980s at Moscow’s Higher Combined Arms Command School. He finished his military education in independent Ukraine. By 2013, the last peaceful year, he was a major general and deputy chief of the main command center, handling cooperation with NATO.
War found him in the east. In 2014 he became deputy commander of the Anti-Terrorist Operation in Donbas, and three years later he took over. He helped plan the withdrawal from the nearly encircled town of Debaltseve in 2015 and received the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky for it. In August 2019 he took charge of the Ground Forces.
His two best-known jobs came in 2022. In the spring he organised the defense of Kyiv, dividing the city and surrounding region into sectors under generals drawn from the military education centers, a structure the Washington Post described as a clear chain of command. Russia retreated after a battle that ran more than a month. That autumn he led the Kharkiv counteroffensive, which freed Izium, Balakliia and Kupiansk. “On the first day, we advanced 18 kilometers near Balakliia,” he said in February 2023.
Bakhmut and the doubts
Then came the harder year. In 2023 Syrskyi commanded the eastern group, which held the hottest sections of the front, including Bakhmut. After 10 months of heavy fighting that cost both armies dearly, Russia captured the town in May 2023. Since the fall, his Khortytsia group has fought on the defensive near Kupiansk and Lyman.
Opinion among soldiers is split. Military observer Ivan Stupak told the Kyiv Independent that some troops call Syrskyi a “butcher” fond of “meat assaults,” and that politics would likely reach into military affairs through him given how close he is to the Presidential Office. On the plus side, Stupak said, he is close to the troops and knows nearly everyone in the army. A mortar battery commander named Denys said the general pushed for a bloody defense of Bakhmut. Another soldier, Dmytro, offered a kind of hope: “Maybe Syrskyi will bring something new.”
Defense Minister Rustem Umerov called the appointment a great honor and a great responsibility. Syrskyi was due to unveil a new leadership team for the armed forces within days.
Sources
- Who is General Syrskyi, Ukraine's chief commander? (Kyiv Independent)
- Who is General Syrskyi (Kyiv Independent), reactions
- Volodymyr Zelenskiy fires top Ukraine army commander (The Guardian)
