President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has removed the defense minister who built Ukraine’s drone war and pushed Elon Musk to cut Russia off from Starlink—Mykhailo Fedorov, a minister whom Ukrainians, in the last national poll, trust more than the president himself. Analysts and anti-corruption campaigners say the entire government was dissolved to make his removal possible without a scandalous vote.

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The move has set off a sharp public backlash, which commentators are comparing to last summer’s anti-corruption protests. A senior air force commander resigned, and cardboard-sign crowds returned to the streets of Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, and other cities on the morning of 16 July, hours after Russian ballistic missiles killed two people in Kyiv overnight. Parliament is expected to vote on Zelenskyy’s nominee, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, later in the day.

The crowds gathered at the same Kyiv square, beside the Ivan Franko Theatre and in sight of the Office of the President, where they massed a year ago to defend the country’s anti-corruption agencies. This standoff forced Zelenskyy to reverse course within nine days. By mid-morning, the protests had spread to more cities—Ivano-Frankivsk, Kremenchuk, Poltava, Mykolaiv—with crowds in Kyiv chanting “Shame.”

A resignation from inside the air force

Pavlo Yelizarov, a deputy commander of the air force, announced his resignation in protest, saying he had joined the armed forces in 2022 to win the war, not to imitate activity, and warning that stalling Fedorov’s air-defense reforms would let more Russian missiles and drones through. He called the dismissal grave harm to the country’s defense but said he would stay in uniform.

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Serhii Sternenko, who advised the ministry on drones, also stepped down.

By the figures Fedorov published in his farewell message, the air force’s interception rate for attack drones rose from 83% to 91% during his six months, and for cruise missiles from 47% to 87%—gains he tied to after-action reviews of each mass Russian strike. His team also ran the Logistics Lockdown program, which is choking Russian resupply to occupied Crimea.

The minister who outpolled the president

Zelenskyy has cast the decision as a management problem. At a Servant of the People faction meeting on 15 July, he pointed to a running conflict between Fedorov and Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. He said Fedorov had failed to deliver mobilization reform, according to lawmakers who were there.

Olexiy Haran, professor of comparative politics at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and research director at the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, offered Euromaidan Press a different read.

The stated reason for dismissing Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko—the need for an energy specialist before winter—was unpersuasive, he said, since outgoing first deputy prime minister and energy minister Denys Shmyhal was already a high-level specialist in the field.

The more convincing explanation lay in Fedorov: dissolving the whole cabinet let Zelenskyy drop him without a targeted dismissal vote that would have drawn a scandal. Anti-corruption campaigner Daria Kaleniuk reached the same conclusion, telling the Kyiv Independent the entire government resignation was conceived to remove Fedorov.

The trigger, Haran said, may be Fedorov’s popularity. In a recent KIIS poll from May and early June, more Ukrainians trusted Fedorov than distrusted him by a margin of 29 points—wider than Zelenskyy’s 27, and beaten only by the Kharkiv mayor and the war’s most-trusted commanders, among them former army chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi.

Zelenskyy, Haran said, may have come to see his defense minister as a rival, and he predicted the removal would only lift Fedorov’s standing.

A former minister’s harsher read

Former infrastructure minister Volodymyr Omelyan told Euromaidan Press that the reshuffle could be an attempt to strengthen the government before a hard winter—but only if real professionals are appointed and left to work free of the Office of the President, which he doubted would happen.

Zelenskyy’s overriding aim, Omelyan argued, is to consolidate the security services and sideline the opposition to hold power indefinitely, with the war effort, arming the military, and EU integration all ranked behind the private interests of a few people around him.

He dismissed a theory foreign analysts had raised with Euromaidan Press—that the change is meant to reset relations with Poland—as nonsense, saying it would take new presidents in both countries.

Doubts about the successor

Klymenko, tapped to replace him, brings his own controversy. Non-affiliated MP Liudmyla Buimister warned that handing him defense would endanger a key wartime ministry, saying he had failed outright as interior minister.

She blamed him for the chaotic “busification” mobilization drives—in which men are seized off the street into vans—that police, she said, first stood back from and then made worse, in remarks on Telegram.

Incoming prime minister Serhii Koretskyi defended the nominee, calling him a results-driven minister. The objection lands on the exact ground Zelenskyy used to justify the swap: he faulted Fedorov for failing on mobilization, and mobilization is the brief on which Buimister says Klymenko has already failed.

Whether the protests move Zelenskyy is the open question. Last summer, mass protests and a freeze on EU aid reversed a similar move in nine days. Haran expects it to be harder this time: a reversal would mean Zelenskyy openly readmitting Fedorov, and the president, he said, is stubborn in such moments.

Peaceful "cardboard protests" against the dismissal of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov broke out in Kyiv and at least 16 other Ukrainian cities on the morning of 16 July. The "cardboard" refers to handmade signs the protesters hold. The rallies were timed to the parliament session set to weigh a wider government reshuffle, and echoed last year's protests over Ukraine's anti-corruption bodies. Their message was to keep Fedorov in the job.

Kyiv fills the square that hosted last year's protests

In Kyiv, participants gathered from early morning in the square beside the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater.

Suspilne says the action was called by veteran and former combat medic Dmytro Koziatynskyi, one of the organizers of the 2025 protests defending the independence of Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP). He asked people to bring cardboard placards and stressed that the action must stay peaceful.

Protesters oppose the constant reshuffling of officials and the removal of people whose work they consider effective, Koziatynskyi said. Hundreds gathered on the square, most of them young people and students, chanting "Fedorov is defense minister!"

From Lviv to Odesa, the same message

Similar rallies ran the same morning in Ivano-Frankivsk, Vinnytsia, Lutsk, Khmelnytskyi, Lviv, Uzhhorod, Dnipro, Ternopil, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Cherkasy, Rivne, Zaporizhzhia, Zhytomyr, Chernivtsi, and Poltava.

Crowd sizes ranged from a few dozen to around a hundred per city. Several began with a minute of silence for those killed in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

The signs spelled out the anger. In Vinnytsia, people held signs reading "Don't destroy what works," "Bring back Fedorov," and "Don't take away hope." In Lutsk, slogans included "Ukraine needs results, not personnel games." In Lviv, protesters on Svobody Avenue by the Taras Shevchenko monument carried placards asking why one man's ego mattered more than the state's defense, and one that read "The audit showed 300 billion in theft. They removed the auditor, not the thieves."

In Mykolaiv, 26 people gathered by the city council with signs reading "Moscow is glad about your decision" and "Swap prisoners, not Fedorov." 

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Cherkasy protesters chanted "Klymenko — no" and "Give back prisoners, not Fedorov." Lviv participant Sofia Boiko said she came out for democracy and a free country, calling it wrong to remove someone who had finally started making decisions that worked, and describing Fedorov as the most effective defense minister of the full-scale invasion.

The Ukrainian government–run United24 media platform joined today's protests:

"Today, the UNITED24 Media is pausing all publications to join protests over the dismissal of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. See you there," the project's X wrote.

What led to the protests

The rallies followed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's decision not to renominate Fedorov as defense minister. Deputies from the Servant of the People party told Suspilne, after a faction meeting with the President, that he would instead put forward Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko for the post — a figure associated in public perception with a Soviet-style mindset.

Commanders of two National Guard corps, however, supported the nomination of Klymenko. Notably, the National Guard is subordinate to the Interior Ministry, not the Armed Forces.

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Ukraine’s reformist defense Minister is out after six months. Earlier, his audit exposed $7.2 billion in defense overspending

On 15 July, Fedorov confirmed he was leaving and summed up his tenure, listing among his results cutting Russian forces off from Starlink, expanding drone-procurement programs, a procurement reform, weapons contracts, and the testing of Ukrainian ballistic missiles.

Mykhailo Fedorov summarized his tenure as Defense Minister, citing the cutoff of Russian forces from Starlink, the launch of the Logistics Lockdown campaign to isolate occupied Crimea, increased funding for the Drone Line, and larger drone purchases than last year.

Fedorov led the Defense Ministry from January 2026, having replaced Denys Shmyhal. Klymenko took over the Interior Ministry in February 2023 after Denys Monastyrskyi died in a helicopter crash in Brovary. The defense minister is appointed by parliament on the President's nomination, as the post falls under the presidential quota.