Over the past week, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has faced his biggest political crisis since this time last year. And just as they did back then, Western analysts and media outlets have concocted a pro-Zelensky narrative that downplays evident political dysfunction and misrepresents the struggles for power that are actually driving events.
Last July, Zelensky signed a law that sharply limited the autonomy of Ukraine’s main anticorruption agencies by placing them under the control of the prosecutor general, an official appointed by the president (i.e., handpicked by Zelensky). Protesters flooded the streets, and the European Union reacted harshly, warning the move would complicate Kiev’s pathway to membership. Amid the fallout, which plainly he hadn’t anticipated, Zelensky restored the watchdogs’ political independence.
One year later, nearly to the day, Zelensky again angered many of his countrymen by firing the respected minister of defense, Mykhailo Fedorov, just six months into his tenure. Ukrainians protested in the thousands to demand Fedorov’s reinstatement.
Now, you might think that Zelensky’s ham-handed effort to crush anticorruption bodies and his decision to sack a promising defense minister during a war would provoke at least some skepticism about his credibility as a leader. You might be wrong. Among Western supporters of Zelensky, both episodes were seen as anomalous missteps and, ultimately, evidence of Ukraine’s democratic resilience as it transforms into a Western-style nation.
As protesters marched to support Fedorov, Max Boot of the Washington Post offered a typical reaction: “What Ukraine has shown is that, notwithstanding the power wielded by a president in wartime, there remain checks and balances on Zelensky’s decision-making.” That assessment does contain some truth, and subsequent events seemed to vindicate it.
While the Ukrainian leader didn’t reverse Fedorov’s dismissal, he did throw a bone to the protesters, firing the unpopular Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi—with whom Fedorov had been feuding—and replacing him with the younger, more popular Mykhailo Drapatyi (who is particularly well-regarded by Fedorov’s supporters).
But Boot didn’t limit himself to expressing admiration for Ukraine’s democratic resilience—he also waxed poetic about Zelensky. “Of the leaders in the world’s nearly 200 countries, there is none that I admire as much as Volodymyr Zelensky,” he wrote. “He has been a profile in courage with few equals since the days of Winston Churchill.” Fedorov’s firing, Boot added, “should not shake anyone’s faith” in Zelensky, who didn’t take the “autocrat’s route” of crushing the protesters. Retweeting Boot’s column, the chess legend Garry Kasparov said Ukraine was reminding the West of its fundamental values.
The facts simply cannot sustain this hagiography. No doubt, Zelensky performed admirably during the early weeks of Russia’s invasion, rallying Ukrainians in a time of profound anxiety. But since then, Zelensky has repeatedly shown that his political interests dictate, and sometimes hobble, his wartime leadership, with the dismissal of Fedorov being just the latest example.
An upcoming report by the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center—a draft of which was made available to The American Conservative—lays out the driving force of Zelensky’s military overhaul. “The changes reflect a broader political choice in favor of political cohesion over disruptive reform at the nexus of the state: the security sector, which now consumes 60 percent of public expenditure,” writes the author, Balazs Jarabik.
The 35-year-old Fedorov had become the face of Ukrainian advances in defense technologies, drone warfare, and deep strikes into Russia. His tenure coincided with a phase of the war in which Ukraine seemed to gain momentum, winning him fans among the Ukrainian people and in European capitals. A web marketing professional and former minister of digital transformation, Fedorov came to symbolize the cooler, reform-minded, and Western-oriented side of Ukraine.
Thus, a clear contrast was drawn when reports surfaced that Fedorov was butting heads with Syrskyi, who turns 61 in a few days and cut his teeth in the Soviet Red Army. Nicknamed “the Butcher,” Syrskyi is reputed to favor Soviet-style infantry tactics, tolerating high casualties in pursuit of operational objectives. It’s no wonder most Ukrainian soldiers and their families disliked Syrskyi and put their hopes in Fedorov.
So, where did Fedorov go wrong? One possibility is that he did his job too well and ruffled the feathers of other military officials whom he thought should be doing their jobs better. Zelensky’s latest moves, Jarabik writes, “reaffirm his principle that no institution or individual, regardless of popularity or wartime achievements, should be allowed to evolve into an independent centre of political authority.” Arguably, that understates things: Popularity and wartime achievements seem to increase the odds of getting fired in Zelensky’s Ukraine.
In February 2024, Zelensky ousted then-Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who had become an icon after leading the rollback of the Russian invaders early in the war. And in October 2024, Zelensky reportedly sought to dismiss his chief of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, a decorated soldier known for both battlefield glory and bureaucratic competence. As rumors swirled and outrage grew, Zelensky left Budanov alone, but he did give the boot to his top deputies.
The three Ukrainian political figures the public trusts more than Zelensky, according to a just-released survey? Zaluzhny, Fedorov, and Budanov. Fedorov’s favorability spiked above the president’s only after he got the sack last week, but it’s hard to escape a disconcerting conclusion: Zelensky works to eliminate political rivals, which in practice has meant turning against some of his most capable men.
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It’s true that Zelensky’s power remains constrained by public opinion, but that’s been the case for virtually all political leaders throughout history, from medieval monarchs to 21st-century dictators. Of course, firm executive authority is necessary in times of crisis. But the image of Zelensky as a model of liberal, democratic leadership during wartime is hard to square with his efforts to stifle corruption investigations, censor news media, and turn the security state into an instrument of presidential power.
The tendency to cast Ukraine as the protagonist in a moral melodrama of Western aspiration obscures these dark complexities and does more harm than good. After all, America’s attempt to pull Ukraine into the Western orbit is what provoked Russia to attack in the first place. And any plausible peace settlement would likely turn Ukraine into a buffer state committed to military nonalignment, an idea resisted by those who fantasize about a Western Ukraine.
Culturally, politically, and geographically, Ukraine has never been a fully Western country, and neither wishful thinking nor artfully assembled grand narratives can change that. Western analysts and leaders should treat Zelensky’s latest scandal as an opportunity to take a more balanced view of the country he leads and the way he’s been leading it.
