New Delhi, July 22 -- KYIV - The protests outside the Bankova were never going to end until Zelenskyy did what the protesters had come to demand. On Tuesday he did it. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine's commander-in-chief since February 2024, was removed from his post after six consecutive days of demonstrations that spread across Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa and Dnipro - an unusual convergence of pro-war civilians who had concluded that the general responsible for defending their country was the most significant obstacle to doing it well.

His replacement is Mykhailo Drapatyi, 56, a general who spent the first years of Ukraine's war in the east commanding ground forces and is credited by military analysts with developing the defensive doctrine that preve...