The sacking that turned Ukrainians against Zelensky
Volodymyr Zelensky has fired Ukraine’s popular defence minister, prompting protests against the government and military elite.
www.yahoo.com
I'm pretty concerned by the news so I've been doing my best to dig into it. Here's the best I've got so far.
There appears to be two legitimate arguments here, both of whom appear to be right but still opposed to each other. When Fedorov took the job, he directed audits of the military budget and found some concerning stuff. Cost overruns on certain programs, no bid contracts to insiders for the production of necessary equipment, etc. The most notable example is that he took 155mm shell production, put it to tender and immediately received bids that were 15-20% lower than existing costs from the previous no bid (well connected) producer. He's championed a few other popular programs including mandatory polygraph testing of military officials (with the firing of those who refuse). He's legitimately helped uncover some graft and corruption in the Ukrainian procurement system that I'm sure some high ranking people in the military would prefer remained hidden (notably though, Syrskyi has never been intimated as being involved in any of the corruption and by reputation is just a solid ukie career military officer who some like, some don't).
The military hasn't been happy with Fedorov though for a handful of reasons. They don't like that he has taken and repackaged some programs & investigations that were already underway prior to his appointment so that he could claim the political win for them (he is a politician, after all). They don't like his lack of military experience, which some generals have stated publicly has caused issues in campaign planning due to Fedorov wanting to re invent the wheel at times. They dislike the gamification program he's implemented (an article posted here recently touched on part of it, with drone equipment being prioritized towards units showing more kill points....military planners have argued that it's leading to units not wanting to do highly valuable recon work like watching transit routes that doesn't directly lead to kills, because the recon work isn't rewarded, only scalps).
So basically the two sides couldn't work together, and Syrskyi forced the issue. Zelensky had to decide between moving off of a hand picked minister of defence who had gained public support for some earnest looking attempts to root out procurement corruption, or the hand picked head of the military who engineered the Kherson and Zap counter attacks a few years ago, potentially saving Ukraine as well as built out the systems that led to this last 6 months of battlefield success. He decided to take the hit to his popularity and replace the politician it appears.
apnews.com
