Ukraine’s defense sector is concussed by a fierce, months-long power struggle between its top two leaders — Defense Minister Andriy Taran and top military general Ruslan Khomchak.
Few government officials acknowledge the conflict but the relationship between the two men is increasingly hostile. They avoid meeting face to face and wage endless legal battles to challenge each other’s authority. And they vie for influence at the President’s Office to have a stronger say over key decisions.
Last week, Taran’s latest move became public. On May 28, the Cabinet of Ministers filed a draft decree that would give the defense minister exclusive authority to regulate reforms and other aspects of the armed forces.
This could effectively stop Khomchak from making decisions about the 250,000 people under his command.
Ordinarily, the defense minister would have to work with Khomchak and issue joint resolutions. But with the new amendment, Taran (who is also a retired general), wants to assume complete control over all key aspects of the military.
This standoff has derailed cooperation between the Defense Ministry and the Armed Forces and thrown the defense sector into chaos it’s not seen in years. Many crucial programs, such as military personnel housing, have been bogged down with red tape. Efforts to ensure maintenance, nutrition, munitions, procurement, and corruption prevention, have suffered as well.
The Khomchak-Taran feud is the talk of the defense community but President Volodymyr Zelensky has done almost nothing to restore order.
His chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, reportedly backs Taran and the president prefers to listen to him instead of opening his eyes. A fight at the top level of the military cannot be tolerated while Russia occupies Crimea, wages war in the Donbas, and concentrates 100,000 forces on our borders.
Behind this mess is a leadership crisis caused by the incomplete, half-hearted defense reform program that Zelensky has neglected. The duties and authorities of the Defense Ministry and the military command are loosely articulated, poorly segregated, and often contradictory. This leads to power struggles and malpractice.
Yet, the Zelensky administration is not even thinking about getting defense legislation into shape. What we desperately need now is to get back to the reform’s core idea: to install a Western-style Defense Ministry ruled by a civilian official and not another old post-Soviet apparatchik like Taran.
The goal of reform was to have civilians in charge of strategic decisions and resource management and the military to concentrate on what it was trained for: Putting strategy into practice and pursuing the art of war.
What we have now is two power-greedy generals fighting over who gets to be the army’s big daddy.
