Zelensky’s Top General Syrsky: Yes Ukraine’s Army Has Problems but They Are Getting Fixed

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) has real and serious manpower and organization problems but it is an increasingly lethal organization that is hitting the Russian army with critical losses, and is on track to improve combat efficiency in the future, Lieutenant General Oleksandr Syrsky, the Ukrainian military’s senior officer told media on Sunday.

Speaking to the major television broadcaster TSN, Syrsky admitted some AFU formations need better commanders, that manpower shortages across the forces are real, and that controversial transfers of technicians from rear area units to frontline duties are ongoing and will continue.

“Unfortunately, mobilization capabilities do not cover the need,” Syrsky said. “Therefore, we are taking measures to reduce our logistics component, the support component, the component engaged in maintenance, within reasonable limits.”

Technicians with critical skills will not be transferred into frontline jobs like infantrymen or combat medics, Syrsky promised. 

Since taking over the AFU’s top command slot in February 2023, Syrsky has kept a low public profile and preferred infrequent, and tightly controlled appearances at field headquarters or at medal awarding ceremonies, to question-and-answer sessions with potentially hostile media.

The TSN interview lasting 69 minutes came in the wake of weeks of negative reports about – allegedly – poor personnel policy, overwhelming red tape, and failure to learn from past mistakes by AFU top leadership.

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Public accusations by military media, MPs, retired general officers and across Ukraine’s giant milblogger community came to a head in early January when Syrsky’s staff – grudgingly – admitted that a high-profile combat brigade armed and trained by France had been broken up upon return to Ukraine and thrown into battle with insufficient equipment and serious ammunition shortages.

Among other topics, Syrsky offered details about his first combat experiences during Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, his command during the decisive February-Marhc 2022 Battle of Kyiv, Ukraine’s highly-successful September 2022 Kharkiv counter-offensive, the AFU’s strategy of trading ground for maximum Russian casualties, and on controversial army personnel policies.

Syrsky confirmed that the Ukrainian military will end a long-criticized policy – which he said pre-dated his coming to command – of forming new fighting units at the expense of reinforcing existing ones, and argued Ukraine is on track to field better-armed, better-trained combat brigades and battalions.

Syrsky critics were quick to accuse him of attempting to sweep serious and chronic problems within the AFU under the rug.

“Syrsky noted that the vast majority of decisions on the creation of new brigades were made before his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which he has held for less than a year,” said MP Mariana Bezgula, a long-time opponent of Syrsky, in a Monday response to the interview.

“What a liar! This is downright sick. It was he, as Commander-in-Chief of the Land Forces, who lobbied and supported the creation of such brigades, and when he became Commander-in-Chief, he continued and brought it to absurdity,” Bezgula fumed in a diatribe on her personal Telegram channel.

Syrsky said battlefield dynamics were shifting away from Russia, and said that Russian army artillery fires have halved in recent months from about 40,000 rounds of all types fired to some 20,000, thanks to Ukrainian long-range drone and missile strikes against Russian ammunition depots and munitions production facilities.

Ukrainian military production led by drones already is outstripping Russian by a significant margin, and research is in progress for the domestic manufacture of long-range anti-aircraft missile systems which the AFU currently fields in too-small numbers, because of limited deliveries from donating countries, Syrsky said.

“Back in Soviet times, we actually produced all the control systems for anti-aircraft complexes. We have the capacity and capabilities to create and are working on creating our own air defense complexes,” Syrsky said.

He said “he was hopeful” Ukrainian military technicians could deliver a domestically developed air defense system on par with the powerful US-made Patriot anti-aircraft/anti-missile system. Development work on missiles less sophisticated than the Patriot analogue also is in progress.

The AFU has already inflicted crushing losses on the Russian military and will become even more lethal in the future, he said.

“In 2024, the Russian Armed Forces suffered heavy losses, amounting to 434,000 people, of whom 150,000 died,” he said. “During this year of hostilities, the enemy lost more than in the previous two years of the war.”

Syrsky said that his staff sees better training of combat leaders as a top priority, along with individual soldier skills and massed recruitment and training of tactical drone pilots.

The AFU’s objective, over time, is to take the initiative away from Russian forces and shift to the attack, he said. Ukraine’s current defensive tactics have been highly effective at destroying Russian combat power and preventing Russia from attacking more widely, but defense alone will not defeat the Kremlin’s forces, he said.

Most analysts credit Syrsky for managing a reasonably effective AFU defensive strategy cued to trade ground, grudgingly, in order to inflict maximum casualties on Russian forces while keeping Ukrainian losses as low as possible given chronic shortages in manpower, weapons and ammunition.

Observers, practically without exception, criticize Syrsky and the AFU leadership for, at the same time, failing to stop incremental Russian capture of Ukrainian terrain for almost a year, and possibly inability to prevent loss of critical towns and cities that might trigger a general collapse of Ukrainian defenses.

Military journalist Yury Butusov, a frequent Syrsky critic, wrote in a Friday editorial: “If there are no changes in management, we will lose Pokrovsk and Velika Novoselka very quickly, and the Russians will move further into the Dnipropetrovsk region…if the passivity and months of chaos are not changed, then (President Volodymyr) Zelensky and (AFU commander) Oleksandr Syrsky will be recognized as responsible for the loss of these important cities of Donbas, and for the first-ever penetration by Russian forces into central Ukraine.”

Syrsky said his command group was well aware of the Russian threat to Pokrovsk. Asked directly whether Ukrainian forces could hold the tactically-important Donbas town, Syrsky said: “I’ll answer this way: the Russians are going to do everything to take it (Pokrovsk), and we are going to do everything to prevent it…we are going to do everything we possibly can, to fight for every square meter of our territory.”

“There will be surprises (for Russian forces) in the future,” he said.