Friday evening, 19:00, they met again. The crowd wasn't uniform: students, pensioners, whole families who'd come with small children, couples. A five-year-old girl in fluffy earmuffs held her own cardboard protest sign. A few soldiers among them. Several hundred people, loose across the steps beneath the Shevchenko monument, the poet's bronze hand open above them.

The mood was quiet, more communion than fury, people just standing together in the fading light. The signs were as diverse as the attendees. One sign, in green marker with a row of red hearts, read "Mykhailo Vasyliovych, we believe in you!!!" Another, block letters on brown card: "Fedorov is our Minister of Defense." A third, held high near the scaffolding: "Fedorov, minister of victory." The child's placard read simply: "My first placard."

Protests like this have been ongoing in cities across Ukraine since 16 July, amid President Zelenskyy's Cabinet shakeup that had the popular defense minister fired. Participants want Mykhailo Fedorov reinstated and say they will stay until their demand is granted.

Fedorov is not a career soldier: he built Ukraine's Diia digital-state platform and, as digital-transformation minister, drove the drone-procurement push that turned cheap unmanned systems into the country's most-used weapon against Russia's invasion. To the people on the square he is the man who stands for winning the war with technology rather than with bodies—and his removal, after barely six months at the ministry, landed as that bet being called off.

A year ago the same kind of crowd defended institutions: the anti-corruption bureau and prosecutor's office, when the government moved to strip their independence. This time the placards carry one man's surname. The instrument is the same; what it is pointed at has narrowed from a rule to a person.

That 2025 anti-corruption protest

They came. They cussed. They won.

What a passerby would not have guessed is that no one on the square could say who had called it. The rally assembles by loudspeaker and group chat—a woman with a megaphone naming the next time to gather, a Telegram channel filling in the rest.

Kyiv-based Zinaida Averina, who helped launch last year's anti-corruption protests, says this wave has no single leader or even a single group of organizers: each local initiative, she wrote, plugs in and syncs "small pieces" into one shared wave. In the middle of a full-scale war, in roughly twenty cities, Ukrainians are holding open-ended nightly rallies that no party organized and no leader directs.

The demand, and the reason behind it

Protesters in Lviv began the open-ended rallies on 24 July. "The main demand is the appointment of Fedorov as minister of defense," said Dmytro, 24, who described the dismissal as a violation of a social contract. "This has become a systemic problem when the entire Cabinet of Ministers is dismissed without any explanation given to us."

The crowds made two demands: remove Oleksandr Syrskyi as commander-in-chief, and bring Fedorov back. The first was met within days—Syrskyi was dismissed and replaced by the more popular Mykhailo Drapatyi. The second was refused.

Iryna, 23, said she felt a violation of reciprocity between citizen and state. "Through documentation, taxes, and declarations, we are always accountable to the state, but the state is not as accountable to us as it should be," she said. She had chosen to stay in Ukraine when she could have left abroad as a refugee, she said, and wanted transparency in how personnel decisions are made.

What almost no Gen-Z on the square could say precisely was what, exactly, was being done wrong—only that something was. It is the same barometer that worked a year ago: most of the anti-corruption protesters could not have explained what the bureau adjudicates, but they knew corruption was being shielded, and they acted the only way they knew.

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Blogger-driven outrage and media bombshells

In many countries, the media struggle to get Gen Zs interested in politics. In Ukraine, bloggers fill that niche. Media activist and volunteer Serhii Sternenko has spent the protest days explaining the firing to a Gen-Z audience—one stream making the case against Syrskyi drew more than 842,000 views.

What they sense, and what Sternenko names for them, is an old-army culture—"sovok," in the protest's own shorthand—of loyalty over competence and lives spent cheaply, against the newer Ukraine Fedorov stood for. Fedorov, in this telling, was pushed out for trying to change it.

The sensing rests on something real. In late June the outlet Babel published a two-month investigation into the 425th "Skelia" assault regiment, reporting at least 25 non-combat deaths of recruits in training over roughly six months—a toll that has since risen past 30 as more families came forward—with accounts of beatings and torture and official causes recorded as illness. State investigators, police, the military prosecutor and the ombudsman have opened proceedings, and the regiment's commander has been suspended. Syrskyi has called it a shameful situation and blamed individual offenders. Sternenko calls it a systemic pattern—a characterization the investigations have not established.

Why the protests went open-ended

The escalation on 24 July followed the president's decision not to nominate Fedorov. "As long as necessary, we will keep coming out until the government hears us," said Yevheniia Kupriienko, 23.

Andrii, 23, rated the government's transparency at one out of ten and said protesters want parliament to act as an independent institution rather than a rubber stamp: "decisions cannot be made by one person in the country without any commentary or communication with the people."

The man at the center of it describes something more tangled than the chant. In an interview on 29 July, Fedorov said the main reason for his removal was not the clash with Syrskyi at all. Reshaping defense procurement and tenders, he said, "stepped on the interests of many people and companies," after which pressure on his team built through the spring. He called the government's collapse a possible "screen" for his dismissal, and said he never fought for the post and would have gone quietly had someone simply explained why.

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Even the adulation makes him uneasy. His wife, Anastasia, called the frenzy around him a "sick cult of personality." The crowd chanted his name at a Kyiv music festival anyway, his face on the big screen. The man the movement is built around, and the person closest to him, are both declining the icon it has made of him.

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A soldier, and a philosopher, dissent

Andrii said he had come to stand up for the voices of Ukraine's soldiers. One serviceman passing by did not recognize himself in that description. "I know neither Drapatyi nor Fedorov. I can talk about my company commander or battalion commander," he said. He questioned how civilians, and young women in particular, could judge how senior officials are appointed, and said of the leadership: "They have big brains, they know what they are doing."

His doubt is not only his. It is the worry named this week by the philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko, president of PEN Ukraine: that the tech dream the protesters chant for is real but incomplete, and that there is no alternative to massive military mobilization. "Without technology we won't win the war, but with technology alone we won't win it either. We still need people," he said. A street that senses correctly that something is wrong, in his account, is a reliable alarm—not a mechanism for choosing who runs the war.

Yet other soldiers support the protests. Veteran Dmytro Koziatynskyi, one of the Kyiv protest initiators, sparked a march "for dialogue in reform" held on vul. Khreshchatyk on 31 July. He demands Zelenskyy give Fedorov a year to conduct reforms and then "make decisions based on results."

The predictable counter-narratives have arrived too: claims that the rallies are paid, which Fedorov himself has rejected. Ukraine's disinformation center has also flagged Russian attempts to exploit the moment abroad. None of it touches the crowds on Ukraine's own squares.

Is this Euromaidan?

The comparison to the Euromaidan Revolution, in which the Russian-aligned president Yanukovych fled in the winter of 2014 after three months of protests against a rejected EU Association agreement, comes up constantly, and the protesters do not agree on it. One participant argued the mechanism is the same even if the scale is not: "No matter who the president is, if he doesn't listen, that was Yanukovych's mistake."

The serviceman rejected the comparison entirely. In 2013 the choice was between the European Union and Russia, and Russia's response to that choice produced the war Ukraine is now fighting. The present situation—a fired minister—is a different matter entirely, he said.

Halyna, 88, who watched the Euromaidan Revolution from Lviv while her son was in Kyiv, said the two are not comparable in intensity. "In 2013, the Euromaidan was such that I can't even describe it to you," she said. "Well, now the protests are not like that. People are just relaxing."

She supports them anyway. People are tired of lies and tired of a war Russia forced on them, she said, and the worst of it is that young people are dying with no end in sight. She wants to live long enough to see Ukraine at peace and left alone. Whether the rallies continue, she did not know. "I think the clock is ticking."

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Ukrainians opposed the firing of their defense minister by 14 to one. A Rating Group survey conducted on 20-21 July found that 72% of Ukrainians did not support Mykhailo Fedorov's dismissal as defense minister and 5% supported it, while 55% backed Oleksandr Syrskyi's resignation as commander-in-chief and 15% opposed it.

Zelenskyy dismissed Fedorov on 15 July after six months as defense minister, and Fedorov said the day after that Syrskyi had given him an ultimatum and blocked his reforms. After that, protests broke out in Kyiv and at least 16 other cities demanding Fedorov's return and Syrskyi's removal.

On 21 July, Zelenskyy dismissed Syrskyi and named Mykhailo Drapatyi commander-in-chief. Meanwhile, Fedorov remains outside the government, and protests continue.  

Numbers match what streets were chanting

The survey ran on the fifth and sixth days of protests that began on 16 July, when demonstrators in Kyiv and at least 16 other cities carried cardboard signs reading "Bring Fedorov back" and "Syrskyi out."

Rating Group's figures put a national number on those two slogans and show they carried different weights. Nearly three-quarters of Ukrainians rejected the removal of the reformist minister who ran drone procurement and the Army of Drones program. A smaller but decisive majority wanted the commander-in-chief, whose command style soldiers criticized, to go.

Zelenskyy has met weaker demand and left stronger one open

The sequencing now sits awkwardly against the numbers. Zelenskyy dismissed Syrskyi on 21 July and appointed Drapatyi in his place, the change 55% wanted. He has not made his decision on Fedorov, the man whom most Ukrainians did not want removed, though he met him on 21 July, and reports have suggested a possible role in coordinating military technology.

Earlier, protesters demanding the return of dismissed defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov set the government a deadline: reinstate him and remove Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi by 24 July, or they will begin open-ended nightly rallies. 

It is the second time in a year that Ukraine’s streets have set terms on one of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s wartime decisions. Last summer, a week of rallies forced him to reverse a law that curbed the independence of the country’s anti-corruption agencies.

On the fifth straight day of protests demanding his removal, Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi ended his silence—with a rare column apologizing to dismissed defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov and insisting he is fighting Russia, not the ministry—three days before the protesters’ 24 July deadline expires.

The column carries hard facts along with the apology: a month after new military contracts were unveiled, about 2,000 servicemen in a million-strong army have signed them, Syrskyi wrote, and money for soldiers’ pay was redirected to drone purchases, putting second-half salaries in question.

Since Fedorov’s dismissal in last week’s government reshuffle, protesters in more than a dozen cities have set the government an ultimatum: reinstate the minister and remove Syrskyi by 24 July, or rallies go nightly.

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Syrskyi is the last of the principals to speak. Fedorov thanked his supporters on 18 July, writing that changes will come and that “dialogue exists.” Presidential Office head Kyrylo Budanov urged calm on 20 July, saying the position of society “has been heard” and warning that the enemy watches every internal dispute, waiting for Ukrainians to fight each other. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has promised decisions. The commander-in-chief’s column is the first point-by-point answer to the accusations.

“Mykhailo Albertovych, forgive me. I can be harsh.”

Oleksandr Syrskyi

An apology, and a defense

Syrskyi wrote in Militarnyi that media work does not interest him and that it came as a surprise to learn he and the minister had a “conflict,” having seen their relations as working ones—hard questions, different positions. Then he addressed the former minister directly: “Mykhailo Albertovych, forgive me. I can be harsh.”

He asked both Fedorov and the public to focus on victory rather than personalities, warning that splitting into a “Fedorov camp” and a “Syrskyi camp” reduces questions of life and death to slogans—the greatest favor Ukrainians could do the enemy.

He also answered the charge he called the strangest: that he does not want to fight with drones. The Unmanned Systems Forces were created as a separate branch under his command, he wrote, and he personally proposed Robert Brovdi, the officer known as Madiar, to lead them. “It was an unpopular decision, and I took full responsibility for it,” Syrskyi wrote.

But drones alone do not prepare a battlefield, he argued: the army also needs artillery, mortars, air defense, and electronic warfare, and the ministry must buy everything, not only what is in fashion. As for the demand that he publish a war strategy, he wrote that whoever asks the commander to present his strategy publicly is asking him to present it to the enemy.

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The numbers he chose to publish

Beyond the apology, Syrskyi turned to the reform the protesters credit Fedorov with—and published a number: a month after the new military contracts were presented, about 2,000 servicemen had signed them. At the same time, he had received a stream of demotivated soldiers who expected one set of terms and got another.

Those contracts are the centerpiece of the army reform Fedorov launched a month before his dismissal: for the first time, soldiers can sign for a fixed term—10 to 14 months in infantry-assault roles, 24 months in other combat and support positions—with a guaranteed deferral from mobilization when the contract ends, replacing service without an end date, Fedorov explained in June. Signing opened on 15 June.

The government resolution behind the contract “experiment” raises serious legal questions, Syrskyi added, contrasting it with pay rises in the Interior Ministry system, which went through budget amendments and a parliamentary vote.

An acting minister, a running clock

While the general wrote, the government moved. From 20 July, deputy defense minister Yevhenii Khmara—who previously led the Security Service’s Alpha special operations center and served as the agency’s acting head—officially took over as acting defense minister under a Cabinet order signed by new Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi, the Ukrainian outlet NV reported.

A permanent minister still requires a parliamentary vote, and MPs closed their July sittings, leaving both ministries vacant until the next scheduled plenary on 18 August, unless Parliament is recalled early.

Meanwhile, ZN.UA reported that the President’s Office is considering offering Fedorov a new role as coordinator of military technology development—a “miltech czar”—while discussions continue on a possible replacement for Syrskyi, citing its sources in Washington. Neither has been confirmed.

In Lviv, a crossed-out cheese

The streets did not wait for the column. Protesters came out for a fifth straight day in cities across Ukraine, including Lviv, where two of them—Yarema, 20, and Khrystyna, 21—answered Euromaidan Press’s question about why they were there by pointing at their cardboard sign: a wedge of cheese, crossed out. Syr—cheese—is the first syllable of the commander-in-chief’s surname.

“We are here because we see the possibility, the opportunity, and the desire to fight for our future, the future of our country,” Yarema told Euromaidan Press. “We have seen the changes that were happening. And we want these changes to continue happening, because these were good changes, first and foremost, for our military.”

“This is not the first rally,” he added. “But I hope it’s the last.”

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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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.