Thousands of people took to the streets of cities across Ukraine on Thursday to protest the dismissal of Mykhailo Fedorov, the country’s young and tech-minded defense minister, just six months into his tenure.
The demonstrations were only the second large street protests in Ukraine during more than four years of war. Rallies also took place last year against a move by President Volodymyr Zelensky to neuter anticorruption agencies.
On Thursday, protesters poured into a square in central Kyiv, the capital. They turned out in Odesa, in the south, and in Lviv, in the west. In the frontline city of Kharkiv, in the northeast, more than 300 protesters with cardboard signs crowded sidewalks, chanting “Shame, shame, shame!” Their numbers grew as the morning wore on.
“Hands off Fedorov!” one sign read. “Why break what’s working?” read another.
The protesters were dismayed that Mr. Zelensky had ousted his defense minister just as many military analysts were saying the war had turned in Ukraine’s favor. The shift is more marked than any since the conflict’s first months, when Russia endured a series of defeats.
Mr. Fedorov, 35, is a prominent proponent of the use of unmanned systems in the war. He had come to symbolize Ukraine’s success in using long-range drones to strike military and oil industry targets inside Russia and to wage an intense campaign to cut off occupied Crimea.
His removal prompted despair among many protesters, who saw it as a victory for an old guard inside the military and for a defense industry that had disagreed with his vision for the future of war. Variations of “Fedorov is innovation, old grandpas are degeneration” appeared on many of the cardboard signs.
At a news conference in Kyiv, Mr. Fedorov defended his record and said that he had urged Mr. Zelensky to remove Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, but that the president had declined.
Mr. Fedorov, who clashed repeatedly with Mr. Syrskyi over war strategy, accused him of “blocking all of our initiatives.”
“Instead of figuring out how to defeat Russia asymmetrically,” Mr. Fedorov said, referring to the drone campaign he championed, Mr. Syrskyi “figured out how to split the country.” Mr. Syrskyi had made no public comments as of early Thursday afternoon.
Mr. Fedorov acknowledged the anger on the streets.
“Today we see that the Ukrainian people have taken a stand,” he said, adding, “Why is it that now, when hopes have emerged and the initiative has been seized, this trajectory is breaking?”
At the protest in Kharkiv, Maria Chaplihina, 12, stood quietly with her grandfather, holding a sign that read “Bring Back Fedorov.” It was her first time protesting, Maria said. Most of her friends were home, she added, but she felt it was important to come out and make her feelings known.
Winning the war is the most important thing, she said, and Mr. Fedorov had been doing great work.
“Our president wants to overthrow him because he’s doing a good job,” she said. “People don’t like it, and neither do I.”
“We want the president to hear us,” she added, as her grandfather looked on, proud of her English and her civic sensibility. “We need to speak.”
The call for Thursday’s street protests came from Dmytro Koziatynsky, a war veteran who in July orchestrated the demonstrations against Mr. Zelensky’s crackdown on anticorruption agencies.
Those demonstrations, known as the “cardboard protests” for their hastily drawn signs, ultimately led Mr. Zelensky to reverse course.
On Thursday, at least 1,000 people gathered in the square in central Kyiv, at a spot within earshot of Mr. Zelensky’s office on Bankova Street. The crowd of mostly young people stamped their feet, waving signs and demanding the resignation of Mr. Syrskyi, the commander in chief.
“I really worry about what is happening now,” said Andriy Fedun, 54, a retired psychologist.
He said he previously supported Mr. Zelensky, admiring the president’s diplomacy in rallying the world to Ukraine’s side, but believed that firing a popular defense minister just as the war turned in Ukraine’s favor was a mistake.
“The Russians dream of our having internal problems,” he said. “Why remove him now?”
There was no immediate response from Mr. Zelensky on Thursday as images of protests ricocheted across social media. At least one senior military official said he was resigning in protest: Col. Pavlo Yelizarov, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s Air Forces.
“This is a great evil for the country’s defense capability,” he wrote in a Facebook post alongside a resignation letter, warning that abandoning Mr. Fedorov’s strategic air-defense reforms would lead to more damage from Russian strikes.
In Kharkiv, Kateryna Arkhypova, a protester who works at an IT company, said that Ukraine could win the war only “by having a young, reformed system with new approaches, rather than with outdated Soviet approaches to life, war and regulations.”
Some serving soldiers joined the demonstrations. Nazariy Yeremenko, 25, protested what he called a “glaring injustice,” saying he hoped that “the power of the people, the power of free speech, will bring more sanity to the legislative system of Ukraine.”
He pointed to Ukraine’s deep strikes into Russia, its campaign to cut off Crimea and its attacks on Moscow to ramp up pressure on President Vladimir V. Putin as proof of Mr. Fedorov’s value.
“Me and my brothers-in-arms, we see an increase in efficiency,” he said. The crowd behind him chanted “Parliament, say no,” urging lawmakers to reject Mr. Zelensky’s choice to replace Mr. Fedorov — reported to be the interior minister, Ihor Klymenko — in a vote on Thursday.
Mr. Fedorov’s departure comes during a broader government reshuffling that has included the resignation of Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko. Mr. Zelensky plans to replace her with Serhiy Koretsky, the chief executive of the national oil and gas company.
Nataliia Novosolova contributed reporting.
