Mykhailo Drapatyi: Ukraine names new commander-in-chief to shift war momentum

Through a haze of smoke, a lone Ukrainian armoured vehicle suddenly burst into view. The BMP-2 accelerated towards a barricade of tyres and debris, smashing through it in seconds as protesters scattered.

Behind the controls, on the chaotic streets of Mariupol on 9 May 2014, was a little-known officer named Mykhailo Drapatyi. The footage became one of the defining images of Russia’s first attempt to seize eastern Ukraine, and made Drapatyi one of Ukraine’s military heroes.

Twelve years later, he has the top job.

On Tuesday night, the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, named the 43-year-old major general as the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, putting him at the head of the military as Kyiv tries to shift the momentum of the war.

The appointment was one of the few wartime decisions in Ukraine to command near-universal support, reflecting Drapatyi’s high standing across the country’s political, military and civil society circles, and helping to steady the political mood after days of turmoil in Kyiv.

Days earlier, thousands of demonstrators had taken to the streets after the dismissal of the popular defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who had clashed with the then commander-in-chief, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, over the conduct of the war.

Drapatyi’s appointment is likely to be welcomed by many of the protesters, particularly after Drapatyi publicly backed Fedorov in his dispute with Syrskyi.

“Society expected change,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies. “It’s not only about changing how the war is fought or how the battlefield is managed. We also needed to restore confidence at home after the protests and return the focus to managing the war.”

Drapatyi belongs to a younger generation of Ukrainian commanders formed by more than a decade of fighting, and built his reputation on the frontline.

Supporters say he took up drone warfare early, and pushed authority down to junior officers and expected them to answer for their own decisions.

Perhaps more importantly for many Ukrainians, he represents a break with the Soviet-style command culture soldiers associated with Syrskyi, whom critics accused of relying on costly frontal assaults and spending soldiers’ lives too freely.

“[Drapatyi] is a critic of Soviet-style thinking and micromanagement, and he recognises the problems with lying inside the military,” said Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Bielieskov described Drapatyi as “humane and open to dialogue” – qualities he said were unusual among Ukraine’s senior military leadership.

He said Drapatyi commanded respect among both career officers and those who joined the military after 2022, because he had risen through the ranks on merit and understood the realities of the battlefield.

Drapatyi’s military career began after graduating from the Kharkiv Institute of Tank Troops in 2004, when he joined the 72nd Mechanised Brigade.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion, Drapatyi helped halt the Russian advance towards Kryvyi Rih and played a key role in the liberation of Kherson. As Moscow regained the initiative, he was repeatedly dispatched to Ukraine’s most difficult sectors, stabilising the front around Pokrovsk before eventually being appointed commander of the joint forces.

Drapatyi has also been unusually outspoken about the need to reform the army’s internal culture. In a social media post last year, he criticised what he described as “an atmosphere of fear, lack of initiative, [and] imperviousness to feedback”, arguing that such attitudes undermined the military’s effectiveness.

After a Russian missile strike on a training ground killed dozens of soldiers under his command, Drapatyi publicly accepted responsibility and offered his resignation rather than shift the blame on to subordinates – a gesture that won him widespread admiration and reinforced his reputation as one of Ukraine’s most accountable commanders.

“President Zelenskyy made the best possible choice,” said the Ukrainian military analyst and veteran who writes under the pseudonym Tatarigami. “It will take time for changes to take effect. But I know many soldiers have renewed hope for change, and that is very important for morale.”

Analysts warn, however, that expectations may have run ahead of what the job allows.

Drapatyi is expected to improve battlefield management and the army’s day-to-day functioning. But many of Ukraine’s most pressing wartime challenges lay beyond the authority of any commander-in-chief, said Bielieskov.

Long-running tensions between the defence ministry and the general staff remained unresolved, while the politically fraught issue of mobilisation reform continued to weigh on the war effort, Bielieskov said. “There is a risk that in six months he will be blamed for problems he cannot fully control. Many of the biggest challenges facing Ukraine lie outside his mandate.”