In his evening address on Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a new Commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, Henadii Shapovalov, signaling the move to capitalize on the new leader’s “experience of coordination” and “real combat experience.”
“Today, I signed a decree appointing Brig. Gen. Hennadii Shapovalov, who served in Wiesbaden, Germany, as Commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces. His duties have involved coordination with our NATO partners,” Zelensky said. “All the positive experience of coordination and all the real combat experience of our soldiers must now be implemented in the Ground Forces of Ukraine. Changes are needed, and this is imperative,” he said in his address.
Shapovalov replaces a commander, Mykhailo Drapatyi, 42, who resigned on June 1 of this year following a deadly Russian strike on an army training ground. On March 1, 2025, a Russian Iskander missile struck a concentrated assembly of troops on the training ground in the central Cherkasy region, killing some 30 soldiers and wounding some 90 more.
After the attack, Drapatyi promised to start an investigation into the loss of his troops’ lives, leading up to his resignation.
Shapovalov previously commanded Ukraine’s southern military district, which has seen combat almost continuously since the February 2022 start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
In his evening address, Zelensky said he hoped Shapovalov would bring “real combat experience” to the role, calling for changes in the Ukrainian army, which has been holding off Moscow’s forces for more than three years into Russia’s invasion.
“Changes are needed, this is a mandatory issue,” Zelensky said in his evening address.
Moscow’s forces have been slowly advancing across the front line for over a year and have been making some inroads into Ukraine’s Sumy region, AFP noted, an area the Kremlin has not occupied since the start of the war.
AFU units have also lost ground in the southeastern theater, with Russian troops threatening to cross into the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Peace talks on ending the conflict have stalled in recent months and Kyiv’s once-best ally, Washington, has been focusing its attention on the Middle East, especially with Israeli attacks on Gaza, other areas in the Levant, and now Iran.