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Kyiv, Ukraine Ukrainian colonel Mykhailo Drapatyi drove a military vehicle at high speed through a wall built by pro-Russian separatists who had just taken over the southeastern city of Mariupol.
An armored vehicle followed Drapatyi’s to rescue the captured policemen and separatists in the Ministry of Interior building.
It was May 9, 2014, and Ukraine’s military was locked in a war in the country’s east against Russia, its forces, rebels and local separatists backed by Moscow — a conflict that escalated into a full-scale war after Russia invaded in 2022.
Several policemen and separatists were killed in a shootout that day, their bodies lying around the building. A crowd of Russian residents gathered nearby, cheering the death of the policemen.
The reporter was close to the radio crew – and narrowly escaped being killed by a group of angry Moscow mobs wielding iron rods.
Drapatyi’s passing made him a YouTube sensation in Ukraine. A few weeks later, he led his team out of the hopeless, dangerous territory of the Russian-backed separatists, losing only one soldier.
The young man, who is now 43 years old, rose to become the head of the Ukrainian army and then the allied forces. And on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appointed Drapatyi as the supreme commander in charge of the armed forces.
“We share what we want, the victory of the enemy,” Zelenskyy said.
Different from Syrskii
Drapatyi replaces Oleksandr Syrskii, the 60-year-old general for four years who prevented a takeover of Kyiv by tens of thousands of Russians in early 2022.
A few months later, Syrskii defeated and defeated the main Russian forces northeast of Kharkiv, and two years later, he launched a fierce war. The invasion of Ukraine in the western Russian province of Kursk.
But Syrskii was trained in the military ideology of the Communist era – in the 1980s, he studied at the Moscow military academy next to the top Russian generals he now fights. The soldiers respected him but feared him, calling him the “Butcher” because he said he was not interested in the death of people.
Many within the Ukrainian military were pleased with Drapatyi’s appointment.
“He is very reliable. Those who served with him, who met him in trouble, say that he cares about the soldiers, he risks his life,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, told Al Jazeera.
Drapatyi has been hailed as Ukraine’s first general who likes the Western military playbook to ditch Soviet-era methods that require large-scale manpower in large-scale developments that have become impossible thanks to the ubiquitous drones.
The new commander also has strong credentials – even beyond the daredevil tank-drive in Mariupol in 2014.
In early 2022, he helped prevent Russia from going to Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy’s rustbelt city in central Ukraine. He also said that Russia should not exist as it is now. Russia “cannot be called a neighbor, this country with leadership has no right to exist,” he said in an interview in 2023.
Internal contradictions
However, the appointment of Drapatyi in itself does not overcome the contradictions between the General Staff of the Armed Forces who go to the Ministry of Defense, and the ministry itself, said Romanenko.
This system dates back to the Soviet Union and is similar to Russia, where in NATO member countries, the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense report to their heads of state independently.
“This systemic conflict will remain (in Ukraine) until we complete the transition according to NATO standards,” Romanenko said.
Kyiv has been trying to join NATO for years – even today, many Ukrainians joke that it is NATO that should ask to “join the Ukrainian army” because of its pioneering work in drone and robotic warfare.
Some of these achievements are attributed to Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who was fired by Zelenskyy last week.
The 35-year-old veteran who served as the “minister of digital transformation” in Ukraine was known for his aggressive approach to Silicon Valley.
After only six months in office, Fedorov launched a brilliant campaign of medium- and long-range strikes that disrupted Russia’s food supply lines and destroyed air defenses, oil refineries and oil depots.
Fedorov was fired after falling out with Syrskii’s former chief, and the move led to mass, daily protests in Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities.
“This is personal and political,” Romanenko said of Zelenskyy, who began to see Fedorov as a a political contender who will compete with him in the presidential election after the war.
Fedorov’s dismissal, however, was an unpopular move that only increased his approval rating — and left people wondering about Zelenskyy’s intentions.
“People do not understand, there are no explanations, the presidential administration thinks that it should not exist, and it causes meetings, conflicts,” said Romanenko.
From then on, Fedorov was offered – and refused – the job of presidential adviser in charge of technical reforms in the military.
“Fedorov saw that what he did was important, effective, that there were enough people behind him,” Romanenko said. In such circumstances, difficult issues are not resolved in an easy way, and when one tries to do so, the consequences are difficult.”
Will the election of Drapatyi change the war?
Moscow has said it is not interested in Drapatyi’s appointment.
“I don’t think this will lead to any changes on the front lines,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday, saying Russia’s “success” would continue.
“Our military continues to advance,” he said. “And because of these disturbances the government of Kyiv is shaking from the inside.”
But observers say a turning point in the war is imminent – if not yet.
The change depends on factors such as Ukraine’s mobilizing campaign, which has so far been dangerous, technological advances and Russian actions, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at Germany’s Bremen University and an analyst of the Russia-Ukraine war.
“So, let’s not think and see at the end of the year,” he told Al Jazeera.
The appointment has brought calm and protests against Fedorov’s dismissal.
“But the appointment of Drapatyi only removes the political tension a little bit,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of Kyiv’s Penta think tank, told Al Jazeera. “Fedorov’s problem is still there, although it may be less, less.”
Fedorov congratulated Drapatyi on his appointment and wrote on Telegram that it brings “new wind and new hope”.
