Ukraine has a new man at the head of its army, and he ended his first public appearance with a sentence that says more than the whole programme behind it: „Glory to the nation. Death to the enemies.” Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi, 43, took over command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - and immediately set a tone that echoed far beyond Kyiv.

Drapatyi replaced Oleksandr Syrskyi. He previously led the ground forces and headed the Joint Group of Forces, so he is no unknown name in the Ukrainian military hierarchy. He published his first message on Facebook, with thanks to President Zelensky and the defence minister, promising responsible service aimed at the welfare of the soldiers.

But it was not the gratitude that drew attention. The closing phrase is historically linked to radical Ukrainian nationalist movements, and Russian media immediately seized on it as proof of who they are dealing with. In an information war where every word is ammunition, a general does not choose by chance how to end his first statement.

The change did not come in a vacuum. Syrskyi's dismissal followed days of protests in Kyiv demanding his departure and the return of the sacked defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov. When people take to the streets in the middle of a war to demand a change of the general staff, that is no ordinary personnel move - it is a political crisis in uniform.

Zelensky admitted that Fedorov and Syrskyi had failed to solve the problems of coordination and the existing difficulties on the front, in the brigades and in the mobilisation system. In other words, the top of the army is changing because things on the ground are not working. And this is the biggest reshuffle of the military command since the war began.

For an outside observer from the Balkans, who knows all too well what it looks like when the army and politics become entangled, the picture is familiar. Generals who come and go, protests that push out reshuffles, slogans that call for blood - that is not the sign of a state that controls events, but of a state trying to catch up with them. The question is whether the new man will change that, or will simply inherit the same frozen front.