Over at The Spectator, Owen Matthews has a sobering dispatch about this week’s big news in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky has sacked his popular defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, leading to protests. Matthews reports that Zelensky is increasingly dependent on ultranationalist support from within the military and the defense-tech industry. And he’s willing to buck even his international supporters — Poland and the United States among them — in order to keep this crew onside. Zelensky has also fired his chief of the general staff, Oleksandr Syrskyi.

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Matthews includes some eye-popping characterizations of the current Ukrainian government, which has layers to serve different constituencies —  foreign supporters of the war, ultranationalists, and Zelensky’s insiders.

The most important question is how the sacking of both Fedorov and now Syrskyi will impact the outcome of the war. The narrative that Ukraine is now winning thanks to its long-range strikes is, in part, a carefully........

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