Zelenskyy’s “Own Goal”

In keeping with Ukraine's constitutional system, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s July 14 dismissal of Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko triggered the resignation of the entire Cabinet of Ministers. “Ukraine is changing its political strategy,” Zelenskyy had said in a social media post two days earlier. Beyond that formulation, however, his office has provided no official explanation for the dismissal of the prime minister and her government. 

The absence of any substantive communication from the presidential office is itself the story. The silence underscores a deepening governance crisis and reveals that major personnel changes in the executive branch are initiated and coordinated from the Office of the President, often with limited public explanation or substantive debate within parliament, civil society, or the broader public.

The decision that has provoked the sharpest public reaction is the dismissal of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who is concluding his tenure roughly six months after his appointment, and at precisely the point when a significant share of the changes he initiated were moving from design to implementation. In that short period, Fedorov led an ambitious campaign to transform Ukraine's outmanned army into a more efficient fighting force. 

Only on July 16, with protests already underway, did the president more fully address the reasons for the change. Speaking to reporters together with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Zelenskyy explained the dismissal as the result of a breakdown in communication between the Ministry of Defense and Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, saying the two would not sit down together without his personal involvement. “I would very much like unity. The sides did not find it,” he said.

Ukraine's European partners were caught off guard. Andrius Kubilius, European Commissioner for Defense and Space, described Fedorov's dismissal as unexpected. “It was for us quite a big surprise” he said, stressing that Ukraine's agreements with the EU on defense funding and drone production must remain in place. 

Though Zelenskyy framed the reshuffle as evidence of a change in political strategy, a genuine change of strategy requires more than a change of personnel. With no elections expected soon, keeping the government operational and effective requires precisely what this reshuffle lacked—argumentation, communication, and respect for the complementary roles of the branches of power. A pattern in which the presidency unilaterally dismisses ministers who have not been shown to underperform and replaces them with untested appointees erodes defense capability, drains institutional memory, corrodes the credibility of Ukrainian governance in the eyes of European partners, and teaches every capable official that competence and popularity are liabilities. Ukraine's citizens, its parliament, and its international partners now share a common task: to continue insisting, as they successfully did a year ago when the country’s anti-corruption agencies were being undermined, that wartime necessity is an argument for institutional stability and accountability. 

For Zelenskyy, the lesson should be equally clear: The turmoil of this week signals that it will be increasingly difficult to get away with opaque and abrupt personnel decisions, not least because candidates of professional integrity are ever less willing to accept positions offered on such terms. This may be one of the president’s last chances to heed the long-standing call for an inclusive government of national unity and a broader coalition with other political actors before the pool of those willing and able to serve shrinks further.

The views expressed herein are those solely of the author(s). GMF as an institution does not take positions.