Kyiv, Ukraine – As Russia unleashed a wave of deadly overnight airstrikes across multiple Ukrainian regions that claimed at least four civilian lives and left 20 others wounded, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy finds himself grappling with an unprecedented domestic political crisis triggered by his abrupt dismissal of the nation’s popular defense minister.
The sweeping government reshuffle announced Thursday, which also included the nomination of a new prime minister, has sown divisions within Ukraine’s top military command and sparked widespread public outrage, just as Kyiv has begun to gain incremental ground in its defense against Russia’s full-scale invasion that began more than four years ago.
The sudden ouster of 35-year-old Mykhailo Fedorov, who had served in the defense portfolio for just six months, drew thousands of demonstrators into streets across Ukraine on Thursday, with additional organized protests planned for Friday. A young, widely admired figure within the Zelenskyy administration, Fedorov has been widely credited as the driving force behind Ukraine’s rapid, transformative technological military innovations and aggressive anti-corruption reforms within the defense sector – initiatives that had renewed public hope for victory amid the grinding war.
According to President Zelenskyy, irreconcilable tensions between Fedorov and General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s armed forces commander who launched his military career in the former Soviet Union, left Fedorov’s position untenable.
To replace Fedorov, Zelenskyy has tapped Major General Yevgen Khmara, the acting head of Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) and a highly respected special operations veteran, to take over defense ministry responsibilities. The president confirmed late Thursday that he will formally submit Khmara’s nomination to Ukraine’s parliament for mandatory legal approval, though the appointment faces multiple bureaucratic delays. Ukrainian law requires the defense minister to be a civilian, meaning Khmara must first retire from active security service before he can be sworn in. Additionally, national lawmakers are currently in summer recess that runs through mid-August, further pushing back any final vote on the nomination.
Khmara has led the SBU since January 2025, after previously commanding the agency’s elite Alpha special forces unit. He is best known as one of the key architects of Operation Spiderweb, Ukraine’s high-profile 2024 strike against Russian air bases that marked one of Kyiv’s most successful asymmetric attacks of the war. A veteran of the Alpha unit since 2011, Khmara rose to commander of the force in 2023 and was promoted to major general the following year.
Parallel to the unfolding political upheaval in Kyiv, Moscow continued its pattern of intensifying strategic bombing of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, a response to battlefield setbacks and Kyiv’s ongoing strikes on Russian oil facilities that have triggered severe domestic fuel shortages in Russia.
Local officials confirmed the human cost of the overnight attacks: in southern Ukraine’s strategic port city of Odesa, two people were killed and 10 more wounded – including several children – in a Russian missile strike. One of the fatalities was a woman killed while walking in a public park with her children, who escaped the attack unharmed, regional military administrator Oleh Kiper confirmed. Zelenskyy added that two additional civilians died in strikes on the Zaporizhzhia region, where five people were injured, while three more people were wounded in Russian shelling of the northeastern Kharkiv region. Additional injuries were reported in Russian strikes across five other Ukrainian regions.
For its part, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced Friday that its air defense systems intercepted and destroyed 243 Ukrainian drones launched overnight into Russian-held and Russian territory. In occupied parts of Ukraine’s Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-appointed regional administration head, claimed that three civilians had been killed and seven wounded in Ukrainian drone strikes over the preceding 24 hours.