When I mention Mykhailo Fedorov, I mention hybrid warfare. He has never worn a uniform and has not served in the military. In the past, he was an entrepreneur in technology marketing and the Minister of Digital Transformation. Yet, at the age of 35, he heads the Ministry of Defense of a country that has been at war for more than four years.
Arriving in the government after the departure of the president's chief adviser Andriy Yermak and a cabinet reshuffle, it was Fedorov himself who reportedly suggested Zelenskyy's departure. The new minister immediately made his intentions clear, bringing with him a team of young people, advisers, data analysts, and even a ping-pong table to the corridors. More of a startup than a military headquarters.
Drones, sensors, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, data collected and reprocessed in near real time to correct errors and increase effectiveness. The future of conflict lies not only in resistance, but in the ability to innovate faster than the enemy. With a stated objective that is striking for its coldness, the systematic increase of Russian losses.
Put more clearly, the war turns into "targeted destruction" and the new goal is to increase Moscow's monthly losses from around 35 killed and wounded to over 50.
An "evangelist of modern warfare," the New York Times calls him in a lengthy profile dedicated to him. An anti-bureaucrat who represents an alternative to the Soviet legacy that is still felt in Ukrainian military units.
If war becomes a matter of consumption, the minister takes off his jacket, puts on his sports shirt, and becomes a determined manager at the top to carry out a forced transition. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia with numbers, so it must try to defeat it with speed, adaptation, and technology. The key elements become cheap and expendable drones, automation, military software, video archives for training artificial intelligence models, and continuous integration between those fighting on the front lines, developers, and decision-makers.
But war is not a digital platform. And that is precisely where Fedorov's political knot lies. On one side is the minister who visits drone fairs, asks developers if a drone "could be bigger," measures the results, and thinks in rapid cycles.
On the other hand, there are generals and commanders, some trained in the Soviet era, who still face trenches, attacks, losses, logistics, long hours, and chains of command that cannot be reduced to a control panel.
When the BBC announced that one of the first decisions was to introduce a points system that rewarded the effectiveness of drone units, there was a lot of controversy, including about the effect of "gamification" of war that this mechanism would bring.
However, there are not a few Kiev soldiers who defend his logic. “The reward translates into new weapons for the unit that works best, it’s a meritocratic approach,” explained a 25-year-old drone operator during a night at military positions in Kherson.
The same approach applies to one of the most sensitive fronts for Kiev: the mobilization and retention of military personnel. His mission is to speed up decision-making and reform the military structure. Fedorov, in the months after his appointment, pushed forward a wide-ranging overhaul of the mobilization system, focusing in particular on digitizing procedures and reducing bureaucracy. According to the ministry, about 90% of extensions are now processed automatically, without weeks of waiting, new documents or visits to recruitment offices.
The most difficult identified problems remain the duration of the front, the difficulties of entering and exiting the battle lines, logistics under drone attacks, the lack of soldiers, the quality of training, and morale.
To respond to critics and those who accuse him of not having completed military service, Fedorov emphasizes the personal nature of his involvement in the war. He was born and raised in Vasylivka, in the Zaporizhia region, occupied by Russian forces since March 2022.
"For the past four years, I have lived to liberate Vasylivka. Therefore, my story is personal," he declared in Parliament.
Born in 1991, a graduate in sociology and management, founder of the digital marketing company Smmstudio, Fedorov entered politics together with Volodymyr Zelensky and became one of the faces of the new Ukraine: fast, anti-bureaucratic and deeply digital. A new figure, useful in removing accusations of corruption and mismanagement from the institutions.
His relationship with Silicon Valley, especially Palantir, is also in his favor. According to the New York Times, after a meeting with CEO Alex Karp, Fedorov spoke about closer cooperation on further integrating artificial intelligence into warfare, in relation to airstrike analysis, intelligence data processing, and advanced operations planning.
For its supporters, this is the most realistic way to face a war that Ukraine cannot win due to demographic or industrial weight. For critics, the danger is the opposite. To believe that the front can be managed as a system to be optimized, without fully considering the ethical and political dilemmas that the use of artificial intelligence on the battlefield brings.
Is this enough to stay outside the schemes of traditional politics? And above all, is this the right move to win the war? For the moment, no one in the ministry dares to move the "ping-pong table."
Article taken from Corriere della Sera
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