On the face of it, Volodymyr Zelensky’s firing last week of his popular 35-year-old Defence Minister Mikhailo Fyodorov was an inexplicable own-goal. As Minister for Digital Transformation, Fedorov led Ukraine’s push towards massive drone production. As Defence Minister since January 2026, he was widely credited for Ukraine’s turning the tables on Russia with long-range drone strikes and for cutting corruption in the military. When news that Fyodorov was to be fired broke, thousands of young protesters took to the streets in Kyiv denouncing Zelensky.

The most important question is how Fyodorov’s sacking will impact the outcome of the war

The most important question is how Fyodorov’s sacking will impact the outcome of the war

Why Zelensky fired Fyodorov is a tale of infighting between the minister and chief of the general staff Oleksandr Syrskyi. By Fyodorov’s account, the disagreement was over corrupt military procurement and Syrskyi’s supposedly Soviet-style fighting doctrine that needlessly sacrificed lives. But the bigger and more important question is what the row tells us about how Ukraine is run – and how Zelensky maintains power after seven years in office and five years at war.

According to former senior members of Zelensky’s administration, the Ukrainian state operates like a three-ring circus. The outer ring is performative, designed to ‘tick the boxes of Western socio-political sensibilities’, writes political analyst Aleksandar Djokic, and is populated by characters such as ‘the feminist girl boss, the modern tech bro, the sweet-talking young minister with UwU stickers on her laptop’.

The second ring is for the benefit of Ukrainian voters. ‘You can call it the dream factory,’ says a former senior minister and one-time Zelensky loyalist. This level is where an extensive machinery of loyal politicians, journalists and bloggers ‘talk bluntly and aggressively about recovering our lost lands, how we’re going to screw Putin and kill the barbarian Russians’.

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But the innermost ring where the real decisions are made is composed of Zelensky loyalists and powerful vested interests. Zelensky ‘understands and trusts his own team only’, says a former member of Zelensky’s government who has known him for 15 years. ‘These are the people whose interests he will protect first and........

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