President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy explained the personnel changes in the defense sector as a necessity to prepare the country for a very difficult winter, as well as to establish cooperation between the Ministry of Defense and the military command. He said this in an interview with the British broadcaster Sky News, published on 27 July 2026. Zelenskyy linked the preparations for winter to wider personnel changes in the government. The dismissal of the former defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov, he said, occurred against the background of problems in the cooperation between the ministry’s leadership and the then Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Oleksandr Syrskyi. The president stressed that the difficulties in interaction lasted not a few days or weeks, but months.
“There are issues that can only be solved if the ministry and the army work together,” the president explained. According to him, neither side alone is capable of effectively dealing with the main defense challenges.
One of the main issues Zelenskyy called mobilization. In the full version of the interview he said that already in the autumn Ukraine may face an additional 500,000 Russian troops. In the Sky News text this estimate is presented as Russia preparing to mobilize “hundreds of thousands” of people.
In the president’s view, Ukraine needs a new approach and additional measures in the field of mobilization. Implementing them requires a unified position of the Ministry of Defense and the military leadership.
The second key challenge Zelenskyy named was air defense. He acknowledged that Ukraine lacks anti-missile capabilities, while Russia is ramping up production of ballistic missiles.
“They must meet every hour until our sky is protected,” Zelenskyy stressed.
The president added that he does not have time to act as a mediator between the two sides and find out which of them is right.
Earlier we wrote:
- Zelenskyy announced the new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Mykhailo Drapatyi
- Zaluzhnyi, Fedorov and Budanov outran Zelenskyy in trust levels – poll
- “A million-strong army is not run on WhatsApp”: Syrskyi decided to respond to critics
- Lies, chaos and the “man with a baton”: Fedorov accused Syrskyi of dividing Ukraine
- The Ministry of Defense and the General Staff “were fighting each other”: Zelenskyy sacrificed Fedorov
