Sitting on a stack of ammunition crates at a secret military base, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi was tight-lipped about when Ukraine will receive a long-awaited delivery of F-16 fighter jets. The Dutch and other allies have said they will arrive soon. This week? Or maybe August? “I know. But I can’t tell you about it, unfortunately,” he said, with an apologetic grin, as gulls squawked nearby.
Syrskyi is Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief. His unenviable task is to defeat a bigger Russian army. Two and half years into Vladimir Putin’s full-scale onslaught, he acknowledges the Russians are much better resourced. They have more of everything: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, soldiers. Their original 100,000-strong invasion force has grown to 520,000, he said, with a goal by the end of 2024 of 690,000 men. The figures for Ukraine have not been made public.
“When it comes to equipment, there is a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 in their favour,” he said. Since 2022 the number of Russian tanks has “doubled” – from 1,700 to 3,500. Artillery systems have tripled, and armoured personnel carriers gone up from 4,500 to 8,900. “The enemy has a significant advantage in force and resources,” Syrskyi said. “Therefore, for us, the issue of supply, the issue of quality, is really at the forefront.”
It is this man and machine superiority that explains recent events on the battlefield. Since last autumn Ukraine’s armed forces have been going steadily backwards. One of his first acts when he got the job in February 2024 – replacing Valerii Zaluzhnyi, now Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK – was to order the withdrawal of his troops from the eastern city of Avdiivka. The retreat coincided with a six-month gap in the US supply of weapons.
More have recently arrived. The Russians, however, are still seizing fields and villages in the eastern Donbas, using airdropped bombs to blast a path forward. They have gobbled up territory north-west of Avdiivka, towards the garrison town of Pokrovsk, and besieged the hilltop settlement of Chasiv Yar. In May Russian forces opened a new front in the Kharkiv region, storming the city of Vovchansk. Ukraine anticipated this attack. Seemingly it couldn’t stop it.
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, his first with a foreign newspaper as overall military chief, Syrskyi admitted things were “very difficult”. “The Russian aggressor attacks our positions in many directions,” he said. Could Russia’s advance be halted? “Yes, of course. First of all, it depends on our brave soldiers, our officers,” he said. Quite frequently “resilient and heroic” Ukrainian units defeated bigger enemy groups, he said.
By way of example, he cited Russia’s latest attempt to seize Kharkiv and the neighbouring province of Sumy. “It failed,” Syrskyi said. Fighting continued but he said Putin’s attempt to create a “so-called security corridor” next to Russia’s border and Belgorod region had been thwarted. What about rumours Moscow was planning another assault in the southern Zaporizhia region? If it happens “we can give them a good response”, he replied.
Overall, Syrskyi sought to put recent setbacks in context. He described Russia’s creeping victories as “tactical” ones – local gains rather than an “operational” breakthrough, such as the capture of a major city. “In principle, the enemy has not made any significant progress,” he said. The frontline, he added, was 3,700km long. Active hostilities were taking place across “977km” of it, or “twice the length of the border between Germany and France”.
Russia’s successes, meanwhile, came at a staggering human cost. The Kremlin’s casualties were “three times” higher than Ukraine’s, and “even more” in certain directions, Syrskyi said. “Their number of killed is much bigger,” he emphasised. In February Volodymyr Zelenskiy said 31,000 Ukrainian service personnel had died since 2022. Could Syrskyi update this figure? He declined, saying losses were “sensitive” and a topic Moscow could exploit.
Syrskyi contrasted his battlefield tactics with those used by Russian commanders, who are known for sacrificing huge numbers of infantry troops to gain “100 to 200 metres”. “It’s very important for us to save the lives of our soldiers. We don’t defend ruins to the death,” Syrskyi said. He said he was not willing to “achieve goals at any cost”, or to chuck his men into “futile meat assaults”. Sometimes it was necessary to move to “more favourable positions”.
Amid scepticism about Ukraine’s prospect of achieving outright victory, Syrskyi noted various positive developments. F-16s would strengthen Ukraine’s air defences. They would allow Kyiv to work more effectively against Russian cruise missiles and to hit ground targets accurately. However, there were limits to what F-16s might achieve, he stressed. They had to remain “40km or more” from the frontline because of the risk Moscow would shoot them down.
Russia had “superior aviation” and “very strong” air defences. Because of this Ukraine was increasingly turning to unmanned aerial systems, Syrskyi said. It used drones “very effectively” and was trying out “robotic ground systems” – land robots that could deliver ammunition or rescue a wounded soldier. There was a new unmanned systems command, the first of its kind. “We fight not by quantity but quality,” he said, adding that drones played “as big a role as artillery”.
Ukraine’s armed forces were successfully using long-range kamikaze drones to strike deep inside Russia, he said. So far they had targeted “about 200 critical infrastructure sites”. All were connected with “military logistics”, and included factories, fuel dumps and munition depots. Speedboat-like sea drones, meanwhile, had sunk about a third of Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet. “It really became a trap for them and for some [vessels] a grave,” Sryskyi said.
The Kremlin, he added, has been forced to “completely pull out” from the Crimean port of Sevastopol, after a series of Ukrainian attacks. Drone and missile strikes have wiped out radar and rocket installations. A key Ukrainian objective is to destroy the Kerch road and rail crossing connecting the occupied peninsula with Russia. Syrskyi declined to say when this might happen. Two earlier attempts featured a truck bomb and a drone strike.
He said Kyiv had a plan to get back Crimea, more than a decade after Vladimir Putin illegally annexed it. Was this really feasible? “It’s realistic. Of course, it’s a big military secret,” the general said. He continued: “We will do everything we can to reach the internationally recognised borders of 1991 [when Ukraine voted for independence from the USSR]. We have to win … to liberate our citizens who are in the occupied territories, who are suffering.”
Aged 58, Syrskyi was born in Vladimir, a city outside Moscow, in what was then the Soviet Union. Since the 1990s he has served in Ukraine’s armed forces. Critics accuse him of Soviet military thinking. Supporters describe him as a disciplined and talented commander who – in contrast to his charismatic predecessor, Zaluzhnyi – is often on the frontline. In February 2022, as head of ground forces, he led the defence of Kyiv. Zelenskiy made him a hero of Ukraine and six months ago promoted him to commander-in-chief.
Close up, Syrskyi is warm and personable. His handshake is suitably iron. Meeting Syrskyi involved cloak-and-dagger arrangements and a mysterious ride in a van. The Kremlin, you imagine, is keen to kill him. Aides built a small stage for his rare media appearance, with a camouflage netting backdrop.
Like many serving soldiers he sees his family rarely. “They suffer without me, so it’s maybe it’s an issue for me too,” he said. “But I know that we will win. I know how I have to do it. And I’m sure that we will do it.” The general says he doesn’t sleep “many hours”. In rare moments off he read books on Ukrainian history, in order to understand past “processes”. “We have brave people and a difficult history,” he observed.
One of Syrskyi’s most pressing challenges is to find new recruits to replace Ukrainian soldiers who have been killed and injured. Those fighting in trenches are exhausted. The patriotic fervour that led many in spring 2022 to volunteer has worn off. The government recently reduced the conscription age from 27 to 25. Last week a new law came into effect requiring men to register their details with military recruitment centres. Many have done so. Others are hiding.
Syrskyi said that without mobilisation he could not create new reserves and brigades, which were needed as Russia multiplied its own land forces. “It’s very important for us that all citizens of Ukraine fulfil their constitutional duty,” he said. He urged Ukrainians living outside their country to take part as well. “I hope that after victory they will be able to tell their children where they were. Where were you when all citizens of Ukraine were fighting in such fierce battles? That is the question.”
One initiative is taking shape in neighbouring Poland. Ukrainians abroad will soon be invited to join a new legion there. Training will take place in Poland itself, building trust between men and officers. Later the legion will transfer to the frontline. Syrskyi credited Zelenskiy with this “different approach”. One senses relations between them are harmonious, helped perhaps by the fact the commander has zero political ambitions and a lower profile than Zaluzhnyi. Syrskyi is celebrated in a cat meme, though.
Russia began its armed takeover of Ukraine in 2014, when it covertly grabbed parts of the Donetsk region. More than a decade on, there seems little likelihood Europe’s biggest war since 1945 will finish this year, or next, Donald Trump’s pledge to end the war in one day notwithstanding. Could Ukraine win? And if so, how long before victory? “I think you have to be very, very brave to say when. We do everything to make it happen. There is simply no more important task for us,” Syrskyi said, leaving the stage and striding back to work.