The Dismissed Head of Ukraine's Army Bowed Out With a List of Successes: But the Street and the Army Wanted Otherwise

The man who led the defense of Kyiv in 2022 is writing a farewell letter today. Oleksandr Syrsky, until yesterday the supreme commander of Ukraine's army, was dismissed by President Volodymyr Zelensky - and instead of going quiet, he addressed the soldiers and citizens on social media with a message that is half record, half defense of his own legacy.

Syrsky wasn't modest. He lists his military successes like a record he wants kept in the textbooks: the defense of Kyiv in 2022, the Kharkiv offensive that liberated Balakliia and Izium, the halting of enemy offensives in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions. He claims that under his command 743 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory were liberated, that new drone-warfare systems were built and the air defense modernized.

„I'm handing over to my successor an army that not only defends itself, but is in an offensive position,” Syrsky wrote. A fine sentence for a farewell. The problem is that many in Ukraine read his era in a completely different way.

Why he fell

The dismissal didn't come out of a clear sky. It was preceded by mass protests in Kyiv and across Ukraine, led by veterans and soldiers demanding his resignation. The discontent escalated after Zelensky fired the popular reformer Mykhailo Fedorov - who then revealed that Syrsky had given him an ultimatum. When the army and the street demand someone's departure at the same time, it's usually not a misunderstanding.

The criticism in military circles was concrete: a command too centralized and based on Soviet doctrine, and enormous losses in battles like the one for Bakhmut. A war in which soldiers' lives were spent faster than the front line moved. His successor, 44-year-old general Mykhailo Drapatyi, is a favorite of the demonstrators precisely because he advocates greater autonomy for officers and faster decision-making.

The Balkans knows these stories of generals who become the symbol of one way of waging war, then fall when that way starts to cost too much. Syrsky leaves with a list of successes in hand. The question he leaves behind is harder: how many of those 743 kilometers were worth what they cost - and who counts the bills that aren't measured in square kilometers?