Context: On July 22, 2026, Volodymyr Zelenskyy appointed Mykhailo Drapatyi commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. Some of the participants in the mass protests that began in Ukraine after Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov resigned had called for Drapatyi’s appointment. The resignation was announced on July 15. The cited reason is a conflict between Fedorov and Oleksandr Syrskyi, the former commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. In an attempt to resolve the conflict, Zelenskyy offered Fedorov a position in the government. However, Fedorov stated that he would only accept the position of defense minister. Against this backdrop, Fedorov’s popularity has surged. In the rankings of potential presidential candidates, he is in third place, behind only Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
During the program Main Broadcast on the First News Channel on July 26, 2026, Mykhailo Drapatyi was accused of instigating the conflict in Donbas in 2014.
“Mykhailo Drapatyi has been appointed commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” announced host Palina Shuba.
“He is known to have effectively started the civil war in the country in 2014 when the conflict was still at the stage of protests and Maidan demonstrations. It was Drapatyi who tore down the barricades in Mariupol while driving an armored personnel carrier. He clearly prefers force over dialogue,” continued host Maksim Uhlianitsa.
Indeed, Mykhailo Drapatyi became widely known following the 2014 incident in Mariupol. A video of an infantry fighting vehicle under his command breaking through a barricade in the middle of the street went viral. But that only happened on May 9. By then, the conflict in Donbas had already escalated far beyond the scope of “protests and Maidan demonstrations.”
As early as the beginning of March 2014, protesters began seizing government buildings, followed by a second wave of occupations in April. Among the buildings seized were those belonging to the Security Service of Ukraine, which gave supporters of joining Russiaaccess to weapons. In Donetsk, protesters declared the Donetsk People’s Republic, and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who was Ukraine’s prime minister at the time, traveled there to negotiate.
On April 12, the Russian side clearly intervened in the situation. A group of armed men led by Igor Strelkov — a former Russian FSB officer whose real surname is Girkin — seized Sloviansk in the Donetsk region. Strelkov himself spoke openly about this in an interview.
On the same day, armed men wearing military uniforms took over administrative buildings in Kramatorsk.
Then, on April 14, the Ukrainian authorities launched an anti-terrorist operation. By early May, full-scale combat operations had already commenced in the Donbas.
On May 9, a convoy of Ukrainian armored vehicles entered Mariupol. The convoy was led by an infantry fighting vehicle carrying Drapatyi. In other words, this occurred after the ATO began, not before.
Later, in an interview with Alexander Prokhanov, editor-in-chief of the Russian newspaper Zavtra, Strelkov stated outright that it was his unit that started the war.
“I was the one who pulled the trigger on the war. Had our unit not crossed the border, everything would have ended up just like it did in Kharkiv and Odesa. Several dozen people would have been killed, burned, or arrested. And that would have been the end of it. In fact, it was our unit that set in motion the war that continues to this day,” Strelkov said.
* The First News Channel is another name for News.by, a news outlet owned by Belteleradiocompany.
