Ukraine’s new army chief lays out goals, including use of high tech weapons

Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi's remarks appeared to align with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s stated aim of bringing “renewal” to the armed forces with Thursday’s shake-up.

Ukraine‘s new military chief said Friday that his immediate goals are to improve the rotation of troops at the front lines and harness the power of new technology, at a time when Kyiv’s forces are largely on the defensive in the war with Russia.

Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, who previously was the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, spoke a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put him in charge of the battlefield campaign with the war poised to enter its third year. He replaced the broadly popular Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi.

“New tasks are on the agenda,” Syrskyi said on his Telegram channel.

Though he provided little detail, his remarks appeared to align with Zelenskyy’s stated aim of bringing “renewal” to the armed forces with Thursday’s shake-up and adopting a fresh approach to the fight.

But the changes at the top won’t solve some of Ukraine’s biggest problems: a shortage of manpower that has helped sap morale and may require a mass mobilization, and the inadequate supply of Western weapons to take on Russia’s might.

Kyiv officials are “rethinking” their war strategy “with a new emphasis on improved technology and updated command and control,” said James Nixey, an analyst at London’s Chatham House think tank.

One sign of that may be the claimed recent sinking of a Russian warship in the Black Sea by a new generation of Ukrainian naval drones.

“It’s not going to be easy” for Syrskyi, said Marina Miron, a researcher at the War Studies Department of King’s College London. “There are a lot of problems” for Ukraine at the moment.