This is a very heavy task that falls to General Syrsky. How to succeed Valery Zalouzhny as commander-in-chief of the armies, he who was so popular with the Ukrainians? So popular that the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, even began to envy the popularity of this military figure. Divisions over the strategy to adopt against the Russian invasion ultimately proved too great for the two men to continue their collaboration.
On the one hand described as “the most experienced general in Ukraine” by Zelensky and hero of the Battle of kyiv at the very beginning of the war; on the other, deemed much more rigid than his predecessor Zalouzhny and criticized by some for “not caring about human losses”: General Syrsky will have to gain the trust of the Ukrainian population, its army and Western allies to allow Ukraine to continue to hold out against Putin’s forces.
Born and trained in the USSR
Oleksandr Syrsky, now 58 years old, was born in 1965 in the USSR, in the Vladimir region, now located in Russia. He studied at the Red Army command school in Moscow, like most of the high-ranking officers of his generation. From the 1980s, it was deployed in Ukraine, at the time still a republic of the USSR. But when the Soviet empire fell, he did not return to Russia. He joined the ranks of the brand new army of the newly independent Ukraine and continued his studies at the National Defense University in kyiv. He was then promoted to general in 2009, then participated in 2013 in the development of cooperation with NATO.
The main turning point in his military career came in 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula and then triggered a separatist conflict in the east of the country. Syrsky then became one of the leaders of operations to prevent Moscow from taking control of the entire Donbass. Two years later, new promotion: Oleksandr Syrsky becomes commander of all operations in the East, where the front line is now frozen. The war there then turned into a low-intensity conflict, and will remain so until the large-scale Russian invasion launched in February 2022 by Vladimir Putin.
Heroes of the Battle of kyiv
From the start of the Russian invasion, Syrsky established himself as one of the figures of the Ukrainian resistance. In the first days of the war, he protected kyiv against a largely outnumbered adversary. “Only two units and several battalions made up the defense of kyiv,” former Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk told L’Express in May 2023. To push the Russians to retreat, Syrsky drew in particular on information transmitted by civilians and drew on the material and human resources of military schools, ultimately managing to drive the Moscow army from the region of the Ukrainian capital.
A crucial first victory to ruin the Russian blitzkrieg project, which Syrsky repeats a few months later: in the fall of 2022, it is still he who is in charge when the Ukrainian army inflicts a second humiliation on Moscow by chasing the Russian invader of the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine. Enough to justify the award, by President Zelensky, of the title of “hero of Ukraine”, the highest national distinction.
Trust to be gained from Ukrainians…
Despite his military victories, General Syrsky did not become a national icon. According to a December 2023 survey, 48% of respondents said they did not even know him, he who very rarely makes the headlines, unlike Zalouzhny or Zelensky. Considered not very charismatic, the 58-year-old soldier prefers dry official communications. But he is not an office man, according to his services. He is “one of the rare high-ranking commanders to regularly go to the front line”, eastern front spokesperson Illia Ievlach told AFP. The army also readily broadcasts images showing him armed and helmeted even in the trenches, shaking hands or laughing with soldiers.
Some criticize him for an approach too similar to that of the generals of the USSR and for being distant. Very discreet about his personal life, he is married and father of two sons, according to an army spokesperson interviewed by AFP. “Syrsky is poorly perceived […] he is a man of the Soviet school,” a Ukrainian sergeant with the nom de guerre “Lountik”, who had defended kyiv before being deployed in the East, commented to AFP this week.
…and to win back from his army
Perhaps an even more complex problem: General Syrsky’s popularity with his army seems quite damaged. Many soldiers would criticize him for showing little concern for human losses, some going so far as to call him a “butcher”. He “has built the reputation of a man who places more importance on the accomplishment of tasks than on the number of lives he sacrifices to this end”, wrote the influential site Ukraïnska Pravda this week.
Visibly aware of the problem, General Syrsky assured this Friday that “the life and health of servicemen have always been and remain the main value of the Ukrainian army”, in his first statement after his appointment.
A complex military context
A “realistic” battle plan for 2024: this is President Zelensky’s immediate request to his new army chief. For his part, Oleksandr Syrsky promised this Friday a “clear” plan to repel the Russians, including “change and continuous improvement of the means and methods of war” and his army.
But the situation is far from ideal for the Ukrainian army at the start of 2024, almost two years before the start of the Russian invasion. Between Western support still far from Kiev’s needs and expectations, the problem of military mobilization which had largely contributed to the tensions between Zalouzhny and Zelensky, the relative failure of the counter-offensive, and Putin’s stated determination to continue his invasion until Ukraine and the West give in, Oleksandr Syrsky will have to be at least as solid as his predecessor to lead his army.