What Zelensky must learn from war leaders past

On 11 June, the conflagration in Ukraine was recorded as having lasted for 1,569 days. That is longer than the First World War, the 1861-65 American Civil War, and the Soviet Union’s 1941-45 Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany. For British forces and their allies of 1939, the Russo-Ukrainian fight has reached the equivalent of late 1943 in the Second World War.

Prompted by these dubious anniversaries, many articles have compared the Ukraine conflict with the Great War, both in their grinding battles of attrition, heavy casualties, and prodigious use of trenches, heavy artillery and machine guns. But these analogies don’t really help in understanding the modern bloodletting between Moscow and Kyiv. Other commentators stressed the use of new technologies – poison gas, flamethrowers, submarines, tanks and aircraft, as well as some old ones, such as hand grenades and mortars – that were brought to bear in 1914-18. The opposing sides in Ukraine have similarly embraced new wonder weapons, particularly drones, while unmanned systems dominate the battlefield, just as in 1914-18, forcing troops into deep bunkers, making large-scale assaults more difficult. But this, too, misses the real value of any comparison.

History does not repeat itself, but it does echo. This is because conflicts are fought by human beings, who, throughout recorded history, have tended to react to similar events in the same ways. The historian of war John Keegan memorably wrote about this in his The Face of Battle (1976), where he studied the British soldier across three battlefields: Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. He concluded that although the uniforms, weapons and kit the men wore and carried were different, the human beings wielding those items were the same, with identical hopes, fears, jealousies and other motivations in 1415, as in 1815 and 1916. Thus it will be in Ukraine today and into the future.

One aspect of a long campaign is that humans learn to adapt. There is a common misconception that soldiers of all nationalities climbed out of the trenches to get torn apart by machine guns or artillery shells, and that their generals ordered them to do this throughout the conflict. They did not. Even on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, different tactics were used that saw some successes, particularly in the south. Within days, other units were trying night attacks. The point is that soldiers and their commanders attempted new tactics with new weapons and equipment throughout the war. Adaptation can be seen in the way all troops carried steel helmets and gas masks by 1916, neither of which were present in 1914.

The point is that all long conflicts witness a steep learning curve in which commanders and their troops navigate new lessons of war, while they test which combination of equipment works and which does not. Better communications were developed; wireless sets rather than carrier pigeons. Improved internal combustion engines led to more reliable tanks and aircraft. It took allied forces another two years with many setbacks before they learned what was needed to beat the Germans and win on the Western Front in 1918. Just as battle tactics evolved in the American Civil War, so, too, did they from the Somme in 1916 to the Armistice of November 1918, just as they would later in Russia’s Great Patriotic War against Germany in 1941-45. What commanders at every level learned, just as Ukraine’s leaders appear to have done, is not just how to handle new technology, but how to integrate it. British tanks failed to win at Flers-Courcelette in 1916 or at Cambrai in 1917, although they attained the vital factor of surprise. When tanks were integrated with infantry, artillery and aircraft, as in the battle of Amiens in 1918, a winning formula was found.

The equivalent in the Battle of Britain in 1940 was the integration of Spitfires and Hurricanes into a network devised by Hugh Dowding, which also included radar, human observers, anti-aircraft guns and fighter controllers in headquarters. In the Russo-German war of 1941-45, the Soviets learned that mass infantry attacks were pointless without supporting arms, including armour, and that vast tank assaults were equally futile without infantry. Both soon learned that massed artillery, which came to be known as the Red God of War, was the missing element that guaranteed victory, preferably with air dominance, once the Luftwaffe had been shot out of the sky.

In the Western Desert of 1942-43, as in North-West Europe during 1944-45, sound logistics and distribution were as important as the fighting at the front. This was also a lesson learned in 1914-18, as vastly inflated armies came to rely on ever-busier railroad networks. These took supplies to railheads, from which horse-drawn wagons, light trench railways and increasing numbers of motor trucks took beans and bullets, barbed wire, sandbags, shells, even simple commodities, such as drinking water, to the forward lines. Only in 1916 when Eric Geddes, general manager of Britain’s North Eastern Railway, was made Director General of Military Railways and Inspector-General of Transportation, did British ports and railways realise their full potential.

Today, Ukraine understands this in the way they are gradually shutting down road, rail and sea access into Russian-occupied Crimea, slowing down the supply of gasoline and oil to the Kremlin’s frontlines, and despatching some of Russia’s fleet of shadow tankers to the bottom of the Black Sea, mostly by using aerial and maritime drone craft.

In comparison to 1914-18, the key parallel in Ukraine’s bloodlands today is not the deployment of unmanned systems per se, but their integration into a digital network that includes other remotely piloted FPV systems, support by friendly cyber-attacks, jamming across the electro-magnetic spectrum, plus a range of real-time intelligence from human and drone assets. To stay ahead of their Russian competitors, Kyiv’s drone wizards are daily pushing the thought-boundaries of what their devices can do.

Recently, Ukraine’s 123rd Separate Territorial Defence Brigade used a naval drone to transport an uncrewed but armed land vehicle into Russian-occupied territory. The unmanned naval craft was guided remotely across the Black Sea and, on reaching the coast, unloaded the ground vehicle fitted with a machine gun, which then successfully attacked a Russian position, achieving the world’s first fully robotic amphibious assault. Days later, Ukraine filmed their forces flying a heavy bomber drone into battle with an underslung explosives-laden unmanned ground vehicle. Zelensky’s digital warriors are now experimenting with AI-controlled unmanned devices.

Kyiv’s drones won’t win a war on their own, but integrated with other human and non-human assets into a wider network, they stand a good chance of helping to achieve victory. There will always remain a human element in the taking and holding of terrain. It takes us back to the dictum of American historian TR Fehrenbach in the 1950s, that ‘you may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life – but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud’. So the real value of clocking the length of the First World War against today’s horrendous slog along the modern Eastern Front is to see if the notion of the learning curve remains, which it does, to examine whether the learning process is any shorter, which it seems to be, and whether casualties are lower, which so far they are not.

When asked how to be a top general at the end of a war, the military historian Richard Holmes used to opine, ‘don’t be one at the beginning’. He meant that an inevitable byproduct of long conflict is that commanders tend to get fired mid-term. Currently, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to be in a spot of bother. On 15 July, in surprise move, he sacked his popular Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, which caused a wave of street protests and howls of outrage from MPs.

Fedorov’s political end was caused by tensions between him and the armed forces commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi. Fedorov, 35, represents the new guard promoting the use of drones and high-tech warfare, whereas the much older Syrskyi, 60, is seen as a member of the Soviet trained generation who believe in the supremacy of low-tech tanks, aircraft and personnel. His strategy has resulted in catastrophic Ukrainian casualties. Fedorov claimed he was able to drastically reduce these using unmanned military technology.

However, conflict today still needs elements of both approaches. Machines can take ground, but they cannot hold it. In the corridors of Kyiv, the result was confrontation rather than collaboration between the Ukrainian General Staff and the Defence Ministry, to the extent that Syrskyi and Fedorov could only work together through Zelensky’s mediation. The president, forced to choose, sacked the younger man, presumably feeling he could make a comeback. In response, several military officers and officials resigned in solidarity. Crowds gathered in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, holding up signs reading ‘Hands off Fedorov’ and ‘Stop sabotaging victory!’

This echoed the popular outdoor rallies of July 2025, when citizens gathered in Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Dnipro and other cities to protest at Zelensky’s moves to destroy the power of two anti-corruption bodies. Back then, after nine days of street action, Zelensky directed parliament to reverse the policy. It was proof that in the midst of war, Zelensky listened to the street and Ukrainian democracy was still alive and healthy. Angry at Fedorov’s departure, and emboldened by their success of last year, the crowds again returned to remind Zelensky of his democratic responsibilities to the Ukrainian people. The president reconsidered, and Syrskyi also found himself sacked on 21 July. According to a Kyiv opinion poll, 55 per cent of Ukrainians said they agreed with Syrskyi’s dismissal.

Frankly, Zelensky needs both men. Neither has found a solution to Ukraine’s military manpower crisis, where an alleged two million in hiding or abroad have escaped conscription and an estimated 200,000 service personnel have gone AWOL. Considered old guard and trained in Moscow though Syrskyi may be, he had triumphed against the best the Kremlin could throw at him. During the initial Russian invasion, he commanded the defence of Kyiv. In September 2022, he led the Kharkiv counteroffensive, before becoming armed forces chief in February 2024.

By contrast, Fedorov is a high-flying young politician with a penchant for technology who served under Zelensky as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation. In January this year he became Defence Minister. Immediately he demanded – and persuaded – SpaceX founder Elon Musk to stop Russia from using Starlink satellites for drone attacks. Ever since, the move has caused considerable disruption to Russia’s frontline and drone operations. Fedorov is also seen as the architect of Ukraine’s successful attacks deep into Russia on airbases, arsenals and oil terminals, and of isolating Moscow-occupied Crimean through drone strikes on shipping, railways and bridges.

Commentators have suggested that Zelensky’s shuffling of his commanders can only benefit Moscow, or that it illustrates the Ukrainian president has lost his grip in leading his nation in war. History suggests otherwise. The Russo-Ukrainian war is not dissimilar to the American Civil War in the way commanders on both sides were schooled together before their loyalties took them in different directions. Putin, with his background as a KGB agent and commander-in-chief during previous deployments of Russian troops in Chechnya, Syria and Crimea, invites comparison with the Southern leader, Jefferson Davis, who had a military background prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. Zelensky, on the other hand, is more similar to Abraham Lincoln in his lack of formal army education or administrative experience.

To win the Civil War for the Union side, Lincoln’s methodology was to sack or accept the resignation of several able generals – Winfield Scott, Irvin McDowell, George McClellan, Ambrose Burnside and Joseph Hooker – before he found a war-winning combination that he could trust, in generals George Meade, William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant. That streak of ruthlessness in the hiring and firing of his commanders underlined Lincoln’s strong leadership. Zelensky is following suit.

During the First World War, not only did British prime minister Asquith’s government fall in December 1916, to be replaced by one led by Lloyd George, but the country’s senior military adviser, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), changed four times between 1914-18, often through personal intrigue, exactly in the manner of the Fedorov-Syrskyi split. This pattern was repeated in 1940 when Churchill replaced Chamberlain as prime minister in 1940, and sacked two CIGSs, Edmund Ironside and John Dill, before he settled down to work most effectively with Alan Brooke, appointed in December 1941. Personal feuding by senior RAF marshals Trafford Leigh-Mallory and Sholto Douglas undermined the position of Hugh Dowding, who had just won the Battle of Britain, but was forced to step down from heading Fighter Command in November 1940.

These crises of command also spread to the campaign in the Western Desert, where, in under two years, the British Eighth Army lost four commanders – Alan Cunningham, Neil Ritchie, Claude Auchinleck, and William Gott (killed in an air crash within days of being appointed) – who were unable to prevail against Rommel’s successes and Churchill’s impatience. On 15 August 1942, General Bernard Montgomery took over, restored calm, resisted Churchill’s whims and beat the Germans. Monty himself initiated his own sackings and London’s clubland filled up with those removed from North Africa, muttering oaths against the man with the beret. Yet, in his case, the end clearly justified the means.

All these military organisations, the Union side in North America and the British armed forces of both world wars, emerged on the winning side, despite the frequent changes of commander. President Zelensky’s changes do not smack of weakness, but of strength. His responses to the crowds calling for change are an important indication that he is listening and that democracy functions. We know that any similar protests in Russia would be met with arrests, detention and possibly far worse. Above all, the study of war suggests that changing horses in the middle of war can be positive, and should not be seen as a retrograde step. The individuals removed can be, and often were, redeployed to other roles where they could still contribute.

Switches are often made because politicians are nervous when the flickering torch of victory appears only faintly on the horizon. In the UK, a Higher Command and Staff Course was established in 1988, alongside programmes run at the Royal College of Defence Studies, to train top security and defence figures to operate smoothly with each other, coalition partners and their political masters. Such classes for generals are designed to iron out any kinks in the chain of command, before battle is joined.

Changes in leadership often boil down to war weariness as, over time, the strategic picture fails to change. President Zelensky should not, as we must not, lose sight of the eventual aim, which is victory. All those beneath him, like those under Lincoln, Lloyd George or Churchill, need to subsume themselves into this overriding cause.