New General Ending Ukraine's Soviet-Style Military Culture

Through a haze of smoke, a lone Ukrainian armoured vehicle suddenly burst into view. The BMP-2 accelerated towards a barricade of tyres and debris, smashing through it in seconds as protesters scattered. Behind the controls, on the chaotic streets of Mariupol on 9 May 2014, was a little-known officer named Mykhailo Drapatyi. The footage became one of the defining images of Russia’s first attempt to seize eastern Ukraine, and made Drapatyi one of Ukraine’s military heroes. Twelve years later, he has the top job. On Tuesday night, the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, named the 43-year-old major general as the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, putting him at the head of the military as Kyiv tries to shift the momentum of the war. The appointment was one of the few wartime decisions in Ukraine to command near-universal support, reflecting Drapatyi’s high standing across the country’s political, military and civil society circles, and helping to steady the political mood after days of turmoil in Kyiv. My friends left Ukraine after the Russian invasion. Now I wonder if we live in the same world Days earlier, thousands of demonstrators had taken to the streets after the dismissal of the popular defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who had clashed with the then commander-in-chief, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, over the conduct of the war. Drapatyi belongs to a younger generation of Ukrainian commanders formed by more than a decade of fighting, and built his reputation on the frontline. Supporters say he took up drone warfare early, and pushed authority down to junior officers and expected them to answer for their own decisions. Perhaps more importantly for many Ukrainians, he represents a break with the Soviet-style command culture soldiers associated with Syrskyi, whom critics accused of relying on costly frontal assaults and spending soldiers’ lives too freely. “[Drapatyi] is a critic of Soviet-style thinking and micromanagement, and he recognises the problems with lying inside the military,” said Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Bielieskov described Drapatyi as “humane and open to dialogue” – qualities he said were unusual among Ukraine’s senior military leadership. He said Drapatyi commanded respect among both career officers and those who joined the military after 2022, because he had risen through the ranks on merit and understood the realities of the battlefield. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/22/mykhailo-drapatyi-ukrainians-hope-new-commander-will-end-armys-soviet-culture