“The two could not work together. A wartime president must not face such a choice, honestly. I want unity, but both sides did not get it. I respect both,” Zelenskyy. he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday.
“They even refused to sit at the same table without me,” he added. “I had to make a choice.”
The choice, to remove the corrupt reformer Fedorov, who in his six months in power launched major changes in the army, shocked many prominent Ukrainian servicemen and guards, and surprised foreign allies.
Ukrainians held another cardboard demonstration on Thursday, demanding that Zelenskyy return Fedorov to the ministry. In the evening, Zelenskyy announced that Khmara, who is acting head of Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency, it will fill the space – but only in an acting capacity, until he can officially resign from the army to take up a civilian role.
Fedorov vs. Syrskyi
Fedorov said that Syrskyi forced Zelenskyy’s hand to push him out. Although Fedorov also reportedly pushed for the removal of Syrskyi for a long time. The general has reputation as a butcher and as a Soviet general, rewarding loyalists and destroying the plan of field commanders.
“When the president said that he does not plan to fire him (Syrskyi), I agreed and was ready to learn how to work with him, because we all have one goal – to serve the people of Ukraine. But what we faced was that all our plans were blocked. Syrskyi was not ready to talk about problems openly, but instead he was plotting against us and finally put the final decision on me to be out of Thursday’s meeting in Kyrgyzstan in Fedorov.
