Opinion: The Case for Fedorov's Dismissal

Whenever news breaks about an unpopular decision or event, the same public reflex kicks in. People climb aboard the hype train, powered by popular opinion, social validation, and the need to be seen taking the correct side before the facts are even known.

Then the narrative hardens. Emotion replaces judgment. Speculation gets repeated as fact. Anyone urging restraint is treated as suspect, weak, compromised, or uninformed.

My position remains unchanged: things are rarely as simple as they first appear. Wait for the facts. Separate evidence from noise. Do not confuse speed with understanding.

That position is often just as unpopular as the decision under scrutiny.

The dismissal of Ukraine’s defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, is a clean example. Every Westerner with Wi-Fi, a social media account, and no access to the full picture has already issued a verdict: Zelenskyy made a stupid decision, the consequences could be severe, lives may be lost.

So, since the commentary is already flooded with confident opinions built on incomplete information, I’ll give you mine.

Not because I pretend to have every fact. Because restraint, context, and disciplined judgment still matter; especially when everyone else is in a hurry to abandon them.

The Spreadsheet vs. The Battlefield

Mykhailo Fedorov has earned much of the praise he receives. His work on Ukraine's digital transformation was a genuine success, and I have no reason to doubt his ability as a technology executive. What I do question is the increasingly common assumption that success in civilian technology naturally translates into military leadership.

They're different worlds.

Much of the praise surrounding Fedorov's time at the Ministry of Defense focuses on procurement reform. More competition. Lower prices. Breaking entrenched interests. On paper, those are all desirable objectives.

The problem is that they reflect a commercial understanding of procurement.

In the technology sector, procurement is largely an optimization exercise. Define the requirement, invite competition, avoid vendor lock-in, and buy whichever product best satisfies the specification for the lowest cost. Brand-specific requests are viewed with suspicion because they're often associated with inefficiency or corruption.

That logic makes sense when you're buying laptops.

It doesn't necessarily make sense when you're buying equipment people will rely on in combat.

Military procurement isn't just purchasing against a specification. It's purchasing against experience.

A product may satisfy every measurable requirement in a tender while still being the wrong choice because the specification cannot capture everything that matters. Reliability under abuse. Manufacturing consistency. Existing training. Familiarity. Logistics. Battlefield experience. Confidence built over years of operational use.

Take tourniquets.

Ask experienced combat medics what they want, and you'll hear the same answer over and over; the C-A-T Gen 7. Nothing else. Not because of the brand. Because they know it works.

They know how it behaves in mud, blood, freezing temperatures, darkness, and under stress. They know everyone around them has trained on it. They know what failures to expect; and more importantly, what failures not to expect.

A cheaper substitute may look identical, meet the written specification, and even pass routine inspection. The failure may only appear once enough force is applied to stop arterial blood flow.

By then, it is too late.

This is a familiar failure mode.

The military requests a proven capability. The ministry broadens the requirement to "or equivalent," celebrates the savings, and later discovers inconsistent performance in the field.

To the soldiers carrying the equipment, it looks like procurement officials overruled operational expertise and declared success using financial metrics before the battlefield delivered its own verdict.

"Or equivalent" becomes especially dangerous when equivalence is determined by dimensions, specifications, and marketing claims instead of validated battlefield performance. A soldier bleeding out is not the appropriate final stage of product acceptance testing.

Theory Meets Reality

On July 9, the SBU and Prosecutor General’s Office searched the offices of Ukrainian Armor and the Defense Procurement Agency, which operates under the Ministry of Defence, over a UAH 637 million contract for 6,000 RPG-75M disposable anti-tank grenade launchers.

The General Staff’s Logistics Forces Command reportedly warned the agency before the contract was signed that the RPG-75M was ineffective and recommended other models. The contract went ahead anyway, with a UAH 318.5 million advance. The first 3,024 launchers were later rejected over quality concerns.

The company disputes virtually all of this. It says the tender requested RPG-18, RPG-22, RPG-26 launchers “or analogues,” drew around 20 suppliers, and that its RPG-75M offer won after two rounds of price reductions because it was the cheapest.

Fedorov was removed only days later.

In his departure statement, he emphasized price reductions and said his unfinished objective was to move all procurement, without exception, to competitive tendering.

That sequence is hard to ignore. Nothing here proves what happened behind closed doors. But the claim that Zelenskyy fired a successful reformer on impulse becomes far less convincing once the procurement fight is set against Fedorov's dismissal.

My read: military leadership had concluded the ministry’s obsession with competition, lower prices, and procurement autonomy was overriding operational judgment. The RPG-75M contract forced the break.

New facts may change that assessment. Until then, it carries more weight than the reflexive outrage dominating Western discourse.