Aerospace & Defense Ouster Of Defense Minister Jeopardizes Ukraine’s Drone War Victories By Kevin Holden Platt ,
Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Kevin Holden Platt writes on space defense, SpaceX, ISS, Space War I Follow Author Jul 21, 2026, 09:21pm EDT Jul 21, 2026, 10:07pm EDT The ouster of tech wizard Mykhailo Fedorov as Ukraine's defense minister could jeopardize its rise as a drone superpower, says a world-leading expert on the war and its contending commanders and strategies. (Photo by GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ouster of his longtime aide-de-camp and tech wizard as defense minister could freeze Ukraine’s remarkable rise in drone and robotic warfare and its advances in repelling the Russian invaders, says a world-leading expert on the war and its contending commanders and strategies.
Mykhailo Fedorov, architect of super-speed innovations in automated aerial bombers, remotely piloted submarines packed with explosives, and robotic battlefront soldiers, turned the tides of conflict with the Russian war machine, says Peter Dickinson, an acclaimed scholar at the Atlantic Council, one of the top defense and diplomacy think tanks in Washington, DC.
But Fedorov has also infuriated old guard military leaders across Ukraine, many trained in Soviet war strategies of the last century, with his technological transformation of the democracy’s armed forces, he told me in an interview.
Dickinson, who has chronicled Russia’s attempt to crush and annex Ukraine since the first days of the invasion, via the influential magazine UkraineAlert , says Fedorov has been the unquestioned commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s transmutation into a drone-war superpower.
Formerly Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Fedorov was the supreme strategist of sensational drone strikes that blasted strategic jet fighters across Russia, decimated its Black Sea Fleet around occupied Crimea and blitzed the invaders across ground battles.
Mykhailo Fedorov was the supreme strategist of sensational drone strikes that blasted strategic jet fighters across Russia and decimated its Black Sea Fleet around occupied Crimea. Shown here is a 2019 photo of a Russian submarine off the coast of Crimea, which it invaded five years earlier. (dpa-story: "Russian" life in Crimea) (Photo by Ulf Mauder/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images) dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images Just days after Russian tanks and troops crashed across the border, Fedorov persuaded thousands of cutting-edge hacktivists around the world to join his international IT Army - a subterranean force that began pelting the websites of the Russian government.
When Moscow targeted its first missile barrages to destroy telecommunications towers and internet infrastructure across Ukraine, Fedorov sent an urgent digital SOS to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, via Twitter, asking him to supply Starlink satellite stations that would plug the country back into the Web.
“@elonmusk,” Fedorov pleaded, “while you try to colonize Mars — Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations.”
In a flash, Musk messaged Fedorov that he had activated his broadband-beaming satellites for free service across the country, and began airlifting thousands of Starlink terminals despite the armed rockets that wer…