Ukraine’s parliament has frustrated President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s attempt to install a new defence leadership, exposing strains within his ruling coalition and intensifying a political crisis over the removal of Mykhailo Fedorov.

The Verkhovna Rada did not, however, reject Fedorov’s dismissal in a separate vote in another rebellion. As IntelliNews reported, Zelenskiy is facing a growing domestic political crisis as he loses control over his own Servant of the People (SOTP) party.

Fedorov’s departure was triggered on July 14, when 258 lawmakers accepted prime minister Yuliia Svyrydenko’s resignation, which under Ukrainian law brought down the entire cabinet. The setback for Bankova, the presidential administration, came two days later when it became clear there were insufficient votes to appoint Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, a former policeman, as Fedorov’s successor.

Klymenko was widely regarded as Zelenskiy’s preferred candidate, but lawmakers from both the opposition and the president’s Servant of the People party resisted replacing the 35-year-old technocrat with a figure drawn from the security establishment. Some MPs said Klymenko had himself declined the post, and the nomination was never formally put to a vote.

The reversal followed a public backlash over Fedorov’s removal. More than 1,000 demonstrators gathered outside the presidential office in Kyiv the same day, while protests were also reported in other cities. These were the second public anti-government demonstration since the war began over four years ago. Zelenskiy’s attempt to gut Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms last July also sparked protests. The latest polls show that Ukrainians are now more worried about corruption in the government than they are with the war against Russia.

Fedorov had built a strong following among younger Ukrainians and the country’s defence-technology sector after championing drones, digital procurement and battlefield data.

At a valedictory press conference on July 16, Fedorov said corruption remained “deeply embedded” in the defence ministry and described department heads who had effectively been installed by private companies and attended sensitive procurement meetings accompanied by law-enforcement officials. “There’s actually a lot of corruption,” he said. Fedorov alleged that officials had attempted to award a direct contract to a company earning margins of 200-300% and linked to a prominent Ukrainian living abroad, despite a warning from the Bureau of Economic Security.

Fedorov said his team had conducted an internal investigation and subjected officials to polygraph tests before identifying those responsible.

“We started firing them, firing, firing, firing these people,” he said, arguing that the changes could save money needed to sustain Ukraine’s war effort.

In a farewell tweet announcing his departure, Fedorov made a list of his 22 achievements during his six months at the ministry. Amongst other things, Fedorov said Ukraine had procured more drones in four months than during the whole of the previous year and had worked with Starlink to block unauthorised Russian access. He also acknowledged that procurement reform and the ministry’s transformation to Nato standards remained incomplete.

The reshuffle exposed a bitter rupture between Fedorov and Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyi. Fedorov accused Syrskyi of blocking ministry initiatives and said: “Instead of working out how to defeat Russia . . . he has figured out how to split the country.”

Syrskyi responded with terse public comments calling on everyone to “focus on winning the war.”

Zelenskiy reportedly cited the failure of the mobilization reform as the formal reason. "Zelenskiy said that if Putin announces a general mobilization on September 23, no one will be in the mood for jokes or digital reforms," Ukrainska Pravda. quoted a government source as saying. "The mobilization issue needs to be sorted out beforehand."

Zelenskiy conceded that the two sides had failed to achieve the unity he wanted and blamed his decision to sack Fedorov on the personal conflict between the general and the minister. “The sides did not find the unity,” he said.

Naturally, there have been plenty of conspiracy theories, such as the embezzlement of hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid to Ukraine and Fedorov’s closeness to Western-backed anti-corruption bodies amidst a scandal within Zelenskiy’s administration. 

New Cabinet 

The president subsequently named Major General Yevhenii Khmara, acting head of the SBU security service and a former commander of its Alpha special-operations unit, as acting defence minister. Zelenskiy said he would ask parliament to approve Khmara permanently, although the Rada is now on its summer break and not scheduled to reconvene until August 18, leaving Ukraine without either a Defence Minister or Foreign Minister.

The episode does not amount to parliament saving Fedorov. But it does show that Zelenskiy can no longer assume automatic support for major wartime appointments, even from lawmakers nominally aligned with his administration.

Before breaking up, the Rada confirmed the following appointments:

Denys Shmyhal – First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy

Tetyana Berezhna – Vice Prime Minister for Humanitarian Policy of Ukraine and Minister of Culture

Vsevolod Chentsov – Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration

Vitaliy Bezgin – Minister for Communities, Territories and Internally Displaced Persons

Matviy Bidny – Minister of Youth and Sports

Andriy Butenko – Minister of Education and Science

Ivan Vyhivskyi – Minister of Internal Affairs

Taras Vysotsky – Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food

Mykola Kalashnikov – Minister of Reconstruction, Infrastructure and Transport

Vitaliy Kim – Minister of Veterans Affairs

Oleksandr Kravchenko – Minister of Economy and Environment

Viktor Lyashko – Minister of Health

Serhiy Marchenko – Minister of Finance

Denys Maslov – Minister of Justice

Denys Ulyutin – Minister of Social Policy, Family and Unity

Oksana Ferchuk – Minister of Digital Transformation