Rare wartime protests have broken out in Ukraine in the wake of President Zelensky sacking his popular Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov - which is reportedly in process but not finalized yet.
The 35-year old defense chief was only six months into his tenure, and is widely hailed as a reformist innovator who has turned the tide of war, having overseen a strategy of punishing wave after wave of devastating drones on Russian energy infrastructure.
The NY Times on Thursday said that "thousands of people took to the streets of cities across Ukraine on Thursday to protest" his dismissal.
This marks only the second time of the war that protests of this size have broken out in the capital and other cities, related to deeply unpopular moves and policies of President Zelensky:
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.
Ukrainians started venting their anger on social media as soon as Fedorov's impending dismissal was announced via Ukrainian national media.
Some of the main protest organizers are actually veterans of the current war with Russia, as one European publication details:
Dmytro Koziatynskyi, a war veteran who was a leading organizer of last summer's mass protests in support of NABU and SAPO, posted on social media ”The defence minister is being removed in the middle of effective – finally effective! – reforms, replaced by someone under whom any hope of reform can be forgotten," referring to Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, who is poised to replace Fedorov.
“I call on all caring people to come out tomorrow at 9:01 a.m. to Franko Square and show the president that we are against constant reshuffles in the government and replacing effective ministers with convenient opportunists.”
“We will never defeat Russia as long as the same total stagnation and corruption rule our army and our ministries,” Koziatynskyi wrote.
Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent of the WSJ, Yaroslav Trofimov, has pointed out that "Many Ukrainians (and not just Ukrainians) see this as Zelensky putting petty politics ahead of winning the war."
If the protests grow rapidly, it could cause Zelensky's external supporters to sour on him...
Fedorov's firing and replacement is not yet fully a done deal. However, Zelensky has been open about a government shake-up and reset, but the motives behind it are unclear and have unleashed confusion across Ukrainian society.