Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
Oleksandr Syrsky, appointed on Thursday as top commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, is credited with some of the most important battlefield successes since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, but is also associated with perhaps its biggest mistake — the costly defence of Bakhmut.
Born in 1965 in Vladimir, east of Moscow, Syrsky trained at the Higher Military Command School in the Russian capital — the Soviet equivalent of Sandhurst or West Point — and served in the army’s artillery corps.
Syrsky moved to Ukraine in the 1980s. Following the country’s independence, he rose through the ranks of the Ukrainian army and led forces that fought against Russian troops at the decisive battle of Debaltseve in 2015, nearly a year into the war between the two sides in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s defeat in Debaltseve led to a ceasefire deal that benefited Moscow and solidified its grip over the Donbas, giving it to time to prepare for its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
However, despite losing the battle, Syrsky was awarded Ukraine’s Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, given to military personnel for “exceptional duty in defence of state sovereignty and state security”. And in 2019 he was put in charge of Ukraine’s entire ground forces, overseeing its operation in the Donbas.
Many analysts and Ukrainian soldiers say his tactical approach draws on his Soviet military training and believe his appointment is unlikely to bring the new approach that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has in mind in replacing General Valeriy Zaluzhny, even though some have privately criticised the latter for being slow to adapt to the ever-changing realities of the war with Russia.
Syrsky is credited with some of Ukraine’s biggest military successes since Moscow’s full-scale invasion, such as repelling Russian forces from around Kyiv in March 2022 and the liberation of vast swaths of the north-east of the country in a lightning offensive in the autumn of that year. He was often pictured alongside Zelenskyy during presidential visits to freshly liberated towns, a sign of the close working relationship between the two men.
But while in charge of ground forces during the bloody 10-month battle for Bakhmut in 2022-23, Syrsky made decisions that led to heavy casualties and the decimation of some of Ukraine’s most experienced brigades, soldiers on the frontline told the Financial Times at the time. They said Syrsky should have ordered a tactical withdrawal of forces from the city months before Russia captured it. Those troops as well as some analysts argue such a move could have reserved battle-hardened forces for use in a counteroffensive in 2023.
While Syrsky has touted several successes around Bakhmut, none of them have actually materialised, and some territory that had been retaken after Russia’s seizure of the city has since been lost again.
Ukrainian troops and western officials speaking on condition of anonymity told the FT that Syrsky’s appointment as top commander bodes ill for the war. Soldiers who have criticised him in interviews say that he has callously thrown away troops. Some have dubbed him “the butcher”.
News of Syrsky’s appointment on Thursday caused uproar among the ranks of Ukraine’s military, with many soldiers expressing their dismay in private chat groups and publicly on social media.
“We are all screwed,” wrote a soldier on X, adding this was the sentiment among troops in a private chat group “who went through all stages of the defence of Bakhmut with Syrsky”.
“General Syrsky’s leadership is bankrupt, his presence or orders coming from his name are demoralising, and he undermines trust in the command in general,” said a Ukrainian reserve officer who runs Frontelligence Insight, an open-source research group with close ties to the military.
“His relentless pursuit of tactical gains constantly depletes our valuable human resources, resulting in tactical advances such as capturing tree lines or small villages, with no operational goals in mind,” he added.
Syrsky has said that “the army is outside of politics”. But he is seen as closely associated with Zelenskyy and politically connected — but without the charisma of Zaluzhny.
Some western officials involved in Ukrainian policy and analysts who advise Washington have privately expressed misgivings about Syrsky’s decision-making since Russia’s full-scale invasion and concerns over his ability to resist political interference in operational matters.
People close to Ukraine’s general staff said it was entirely legitimate for Zelenskyy to want to change strategy and military leadership after last summer’s failed counteroffensive against Russian forces.
The president, who this week described the war as having reached a stalemate, also said he was planning military command changes as part of a wider government shake-up. Zelenskyy said on Thursday he had met with several brigade generals who are being considered “for army leadership positions, and they will be led by Ukraine’s most experienced commander” — a reference to Syrsky.
Speaking of his plan to overhaul the military, Zelenskyy added: “This is not about surnames, and surely not about politics. This is about our army system, about the management of the armed forces of Ukraine, and about involving the experience of this war’s combat-hardened commanders.”
Still, even taking into account the experience and skills of Syrsky, there will be a challenging transition period for Ukraine’s military, Ihor Romanenko, a retired lieutenant general and former deputy chief of the Ukrainian general staff, told a radio station.
“There is a danger that the leadership will be somewhat weakened for a while,” he said.
