Ukraine: the uprising of the squares against the military "meat grinder"

The streets of Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, and Dnipro have filled with protesters. It hasn't happened for a long time, crushed as they are by martial law and the daily drama of Russian bombings. Yet, the internal rift within the Ukrainian power structure has become a public chasm. President Zelensky's decision to yield to the ultimatum of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, by removing the young Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, has broken the taboo of national unity at all costs.

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Author: Natangelo

Source: PeaceLink

In the squares, placards reading "Bring Fedorov back" are mixed with harsh chants: "Syrskyi, go away!". But behind the surface of a dramatic government reshuffle lies a much deeper crisis: the popular rejection of a military strategy that is costing too many lives.

Before these protests, there had been those of the wives and relatives of soldiers held at the front since the beginning of the war, without rotation. The protests in July 2025 against the law that weakened anti-corruption bodies should not be forgotten either.

Two opposing visions: technology against the logic of attrition

The internal conflict that led to the removal of Defence Minister Fedorov (35 years old) represents not only a generational clash but a paradigm shift.

The Fedorov line 

Architect of the army's digitalisation and proponent of "drone warfare", the former minister sought during his six months in office to impose a clear doctrine: preserving human lives through technological asymmetry, automating units to avoid exposing infantry on the front lines.

The Syrskyi line

Sixty-year-old General Syrskyi, raised in Soviet academies, is accused by the public and numerous field commanders of applying a dogmatic doctrine based on attrition, positional defence at all costs, and mass mobilisation.

Former Minister Fedorov publicly denounced how the army chief systematically obstructed reforms and attempts to eradicate corruption in military procurement, preferring to protect old bureaucratic hierarchies rather than adapt to a technologically transformed war.

The emotional weight of losses: the shadow of "General 200"

But the most significant element of these protests is the public emergence of pain and discontent over the high blood toll paid by Ukrainian soldiers.

The protesters are mainly young people, military medics, veterans, and mothers. In the collective memory, the strategic conduct of Syrskyi weighs heavily, sadly nicknamed by the troops "the butcher" or "General 200" (from the military code used to indicate those killed in action) during the grueling frontal defence of Bakhmut, which cost the lives of thousands of soldiers to defend a city now reduced to rubble. Soldiers are evidently tired of seeing infantry sent to hold indefensible lines. They believe it is futile to fight a symmetrical war of attrition against a numerically superior opponent.

The crisis of forced mobilisation

The sacking of Fedorov has collapsed the last bastion of trust regarding one of the most thorny and divisive issues in today's Ukraine: forced mobilisation. The squares today give voice to anger against the increasingly harsh methods of conscription offices and against sending poorly trained and equipped recruits to the front.

Without a new military strategy, compulsory conscription is perceived by a growing segment of the population as an irrevocable sentence to a losing, prolonged war of attrition, fueling a social and humanitarian crisis that the government can no longer hide under the carpet of war propaganda.

The unsustainable cost of attrition warfare

The demand for Syrskyi's resignation from Ukrainian citizens hides the desperate attempt of civil society to put a brake on the logic of the meat grinder and to restore the value of human life at the centre of public discussion. People have not taken to the streets to demand more drones but to save their skins.