Ukraine's army is loosening the reins, with its new commander-in-chief thinning the stream of reports he demands, though the general overhaul is still only partial. That is how Yurii Butusov, a front-line drone-company commander, describes the changes under Mykhailo Drapatyi in an interview with Apostrophe TV.

In July 2026, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy replaced former Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi with Drapatyi. Butusov says the new arrangement has improved control on Donbas but has not yet reached other hard-pressed sectors.

From "manual mode" to a divided chain of command

Under Syrskyi, Butusov said, the command system was centralized, with the commander-in-chief holding full authority and serving as the sole decision-making authority.

"A manual mode of controlling every unit," he called it.

Syrskyi, by his account, followed the front down to individual companies, battalions and brigades, and could hand tasks directly to small units. Under Drapatyi, Butusov said, that has begun to change.

"For now Mykhailo Drapatyi does not yet have the full scope of authority. Perhaps this is just temporary. The command system now consists of the following: Ihor Skybiuk, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces and the chief of the General Staff," Butusov said.

They have their own spheres of authority and their own views on various problems.

He suggested the arrangement could be temporary or could become the basis of the army's future command structure.

Fewer reports, two new Donbas commands, and the gaps left behind

Among the concrete changes, Butusov pointed to the scrapping of the twice-daily reports that corps and other large-formation commanders had been required to make to the commander-in-chief.

Drapatyi has also created two troop groupings on Donbas, "Center" and "Azov," which Butusov said have markedly improved control of the force and the division of responsibility there. The redesign, though, is uneven.

"But these changes are fragmentary. For example, in the Kharkiv Oblast a troop grouping has still not been created," Butusov added.

Ukraine’s top general has ordered a crackdown on medical boards that may approve sick soldiers for the draft. Commander-in-Chief Mykhailo Drapatyi signed the order on 28 October, and Dmytro Lykhovii, a representative of the Armed Forces’ Main Directorate of Communications, confirmed it to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The order tightens control over the military medical commissions at Ukraine’s recruitment centers, the bodies whose rulings decide whether a man is sent to the army or sent home. It matters because the quality of those rulings has become a recurring grievance.

A closer look at every ruling, and special attention to the suspicious ones

Lykhovii said the order is meant to raise the quality of medical examinations, stop the call-up of people who cannot serve on health grounds, and shut down corruption in the mobilization process.

“The order was signed to improve the quality of medical examinations of those liable for service, to make it impossible to draft citizens who cannot serve for reasons of health, and to prevent any manifestations of corruption during mobilization measures,” he told Suspilne.

The commissions’ decisions will now face close monitoring to establish whether they are justified, he said, with particular scrutiny of cases where a person was first ruled fit and later found unfit over illnesses unrelated to service, and of people with chronic conditions that could flare up in the first months of duty.

Heads and members of the commissions will be put through regular training courses, including on current standards of diagnosis.

Why commanders keep being sent soldiers who cannot fight

The order also tightens oversight of how recruitment-center officials refer people for examinations, handle their documents, and enter data into the state register of conscripts, people liable for service and reservists. The gap it targets is already well documented.

“I would single out the passing of the medical commission at the mobilization stage, which then creates extra problems for commanders... we later see these problems in the army: they mobilize people who, by their objective state of health, are unfit, but are legally considered healthy,” Ruslan Tsygankov, the first deputy military ombudsman, said.

Lykhovii said the document was signed on 28 October and that there is no further detail yet on how it will be carried out.