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.