“I Know We Can Win”: Ukraine’s Most Famous Soldier on the State of Warby Jimmy Rushton
Former Azov Brigade commander Bohdan Krotevych.
KYIV – For Ukrainians, the man sitting opposite me in a small coffee shop in Kyiv needs no introduction. Bohdan Krotevych is one of Ukraine’s most famous soldiers. At age 20, alongside hundreds of thousands of other protesters, he took part in the 2014 ‘Revolution of Dignity’; later that year, he would join the volunteer Azov Battalion after Russia “annexed” and occupied his hometown of Simferopol along with the rest of the Crimean peninsula.
Initially a platoon commander, Krotevych proved himself a capable leader, rapidly rising through the ranks. By February 2022, he was a Lieutenant Colonel and Chief of Staff of the Azov Regiment, which by then had been officially incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard. He was also stationed in Mariupol with the rest of his unit, where he took part in the Azovstal steelworks’ last stand, only surrendering when the Ukraine forces were ordered to do so on May 16th by the Kyiv government.
Months of brutal captivity followed, until he was exchanged in September 2022 as part of a prisoner swap. This deal saw 215 Ukrainian soldiers who had been captured at the Azovstal steelworks — including Krotevych and the Azov leadership — exchanged for Putin ally Viktor Medvedchuk and a number of high-ranking Russian officers who were captured during Ukraine’s Kharkiv counter-offensive.
After returning to Ukraine, Krotevych assumed acting command of the Azov Regiment, and oversaw its reconstruction. The unit was subsequently expanded to a brigade in early 2023, and later into a full army corps, with Krotevych directing the brigade’s combat operations in 2023 and 2024.
Now 32 years old, and a civilian for the first time in over a decade (he stepped down as Chief of Staff of Azov in February 2025), Krotevych has emerged as one of the most consistently outspoken critics of the country’s political and military leadership — particularly of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Commander-in-Chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyi. Krotevych has long been critical of Syrskyi’s style of command, previously alleging in an April 2025 interview that the Commander-in-Chief’s ‘micro-management’ of Ukrainian forces have put soldiers ‘in grave danger’ on the front.
As we meet, Ukraine’s soldiers are engaged in a fierce fight for the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast, while Russian forces push ever closer to Huliaipole in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. It is widely accepted that the Ukrainian military currently has a severe manpower problem, with kilometers of the frontline held by a small number of soldiers contained within isolated fighting positions. In August, Russian troops exploited a particularly weak section of the front, pushing 15 kilometers (9.5 miles) to the east of Dobropillia and threatening to comprehensively outflank the Ukrainian lines. Azov, Krotevych’s old brigade, were deployed to push the Russians back.
Though Azov has frequently been deployed to the most dangerous sections of the front line, it still has a waiting list to join, and rejects volunteers who fail to pass a rigorous selection process. Conversely, many other brigades often struggle to attract recruits at all.
”Azov uses people according to their talents. And also an important thing is that Azov keeps their promises,” Krotevych says. He explains that upon recruitment, servicemembers are assigned to the role they originally signed up for — no last-minute job swaps. “Azov is part of the National Guard of Ukraine, which is part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs […] It’s more security from generals like Syrskyi, you know.” “Even right now, those people that are being recruited to the air defence forces, they go there understanding that in three months, they may be transferred by Syrskyi to an assault unit,” Krotevych says.
Recent manpower shortages have led to numerous cases of highly trained specialists being transferred from air defence units and even mechanics and technicians from the Ukrainian Air Force to infantry units. “But when journalists ask the General Staff [of the Ukrainian Armed Forces] about such transfers, the General Staff says that this is not true,” Krotevych says. “They lie. But people talk to each other, to the military, and they know that it is true. And these lies just completely destroy the trust in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. We spoke with other pilots, and they said that our brothers, our engineers, were transferred by Syrskyi. Our engineers, our staff were transferred by Syrskyi. So, General Syrskyi is lying. And he’s commanded to lie to others, his units and his commanders.”
For his part, Krotevych believes the “culture of lying” that once infected the Russian military has now become more prevalent on the Ukrainian side.
“I think that Russians stopped their lying culture in the army, maybe in the beginning of 2024,” he says. “They stopped lying, and we started lying.”
The practical manifestations of command mismanagement have become increasingly visible: officers are often discouraged from passing bad news up the chain of command, and similarly discouraged from questioning command orders which they believe are incompatible with ground realities on the battlefield. Krotevych claims Syrskyi’s penchant for micro-management, even issuing orders to individual platoons, means officers are often left without direct control of the forces they nominally command. Krotevych also accuses Syrskyi of a refusal to delegate sufficient subordinate authority, preventing officers from effectively performing their roles.
As an example, he cites current Joint Forces commander Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi, who resigned his former post as commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces after a Russian missile strike hit a Ukrainian training ground on 1 June 2025.
“And the thing about Drapatyi is, when those missile strikes happened on that training ground, he resigned. Because he has a sense of honor […] And he resigned because when he became commander of the infantry, he tried to replace some commanders who made bad decisions. But Syrskyi didn’t let him do this,” Krotevych says. “Drapatyi can’t command his own units because they were under Syrskyi. He’s not delegated the authority to command. So Drapatyi says that ‘I resign. What can I do? You don’t let me make some decisions. You don’t let me command my own units.’”
Krotevych argues that the evolving nature of nepotism in the Ukrainian military is a serious problem, with officers considered “politically unreliable” being denied replacement recruits, allocation of Western military aid, and field promotions. “We have a nepotistic system, you know. Effective generals like Drapatyi, like Apostol [Air Assault Forces commander], like Prokopenko [1st Azov Corps commander], Biletsky [Third Army Corps commander] and others […] Syrskyi doesn’t give them some equipment, some vehicles, some artillery systems and others. He gives it to his ‘own’ assault units, like the 425th Assault Regiment, the 225th, the 33rd […] For example Manko [Assault Forces commander] was the commander of the 33rd Assault Regiment. And these commanders, bad commanders, do everything that Syrskyi asks them to do. But clever, good generals, good commanders, who might have questions about how we could carry out an operation; when there are a lot of such generals, commanders who ask questions, he just removes them and leaves his loyal friends. So it’s nowhere close to being meritocratic, it’s just that you are politically connected. If you are, you get resources, you get promotions.”
Krotevych believes Manko — Colonel Valentyn Manko, commander of the Assault Forces — is the latest example of an individual promoted due to political reliability and personal connections rather than talent. Manko was plucked from the 33rd Assault Regiment to head up the newly formed “Assault Forces” as a distinct arm of the Ukrainian military which answers exclusively to Syrskyi. The creation itself was controversial, with critics arguing that it effectively duplicated a role already assigned to the Air Assault Forces.
Manko’s appointment as head of the branch only compounded the controversy, especially after the revelation that he had published videos to TikTok of himself dancing in swimming trunks to Russian music. Far more serious were multiple cases where Manko posted photos and videos on social media, showing uncensored military maps. In one case, Manko was accused of posting a TikTok video with a map showing uncensored positions of Ukrainian troops — a claim he denied, instead asserting that the map showed only known settlements. Critics and analysts, however, were quick to point out that Manko had posted more photos on social media with uncensored maps showing various troop positions, and Krotevych believes this exposed the positions of Ukrainian soldiers. “He took a photo of the maps. And the General Staff says that officially it’s not a secret”, Krotevych says. “They said that they aren’t secret maps. We see them, it’s not a secret. “He took a photo of the maps. And the General Staff says that officially it’s not a secret,” he says. “They said that it’s not a secret map. We see them, it’s not a secret.”
Krotevych argues that Syrskyi’s favoured assault units — which answer directly and only to him — are frequently used for militarily useless and highly costly PR stunts, driven by political pressure from Kyiv. “In one assault regiment under Syrskyi, there were more losses in one month than [Azov] took in two years,” Krotevych says. “It’s too stupid to lose people so Syrskyi can say to the President, ‘Mr. President, I carried out the operations that you asked me to do’, it’s stupid. I know how many losses we got in other units to free some village and to make a Telegram post. And in a week, that village would be re-captured by the Russians. It’s so stupid, no, I don’t understand.”
The wasteful nature of Syrskyi’s favoured assault regiments seems even more inexplicable when regular brigades holding the line often hover at around 30% strength. “We get into an unpleasant situation where effective commanders – when they stop receiving weapons and soldiers – show poorer results,” Krotevych says. “Because they are not given people, they are not given equipment, they are not given anything. [Syrskyi’s] assault regiments are packed with artillery, Leopards [foreign-donated tanks], people – they are given 800 people a month in some regiments – at the time when frontline brigades are given only 30 people a month. So they do show results, but this result is due to the fact that absolutely all the provision of the General Staff goes only in their direction.”
The cavalier attitude towards losses extends to highly valuable pieces of military equipment, as Syrskyi’s chosen units can be sure more are always coming. “When they send equipment for a good corps and brigades, it will live longer,” Krotevych says, citing an example of one assault regiment which recently lost two Bradley infantry fighting vehicles to mines. The commander of the assault regiment’s response to the loss, Krotevych says, was flippant and dismissive: “The commander of that assault regiment said, ‘they’ll send us another one, It’s not a problem’. We don’t see them in our brigade!”, he says, explaining that Azov has not been given any of the highly prized American vehicles, despite their excellent combat record. Other Ukrainian brigades which operate the type, such as the Third Assault Brigade, which operate a small number of Bradleys, treat the powerful vehicles with appropriate reverence.
Krotevych is also dismissive about the assessment of some (mainly Western) commentators, who argue that Ukraine can make up for the current shortfall in infantry simply by producing more drones. “This is so stupid, you know. Yeah, we have FPVs and robots and they will win this war and we will drink a coffee and look at this from a distance of about 100 kilometers,” he says. Krotevych does not believe in “game changers” and dislikes the term intensely. “War is about units, all types of units. It’s about logistics, it’s about defence, it’s about assault. Combined arms. Ukraine needs infantry […] just not under Syrskyi’s command.”
While Ukrainian mobilization efforts still produce (on paper) 30,000 new soldiers every month, desertions are at an all time high, with 21,602 recorded in October alone, according to former Ukrainian MP and current member of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade, Ihor Lutsenko. Krotevych believes such high numbers of desertions are a reflection of the average soldier’s lack of confidence in their commanders and the low quality of their basic training.
I explain that during a recent trip to the frontline, multiple soldiers from the 60th Mechanized Brigade, now part of the Third Army Corps and currently being retrained by their new commanders, described to me how their basic training consisted mainly of chopping wood.
“Yeah, that’s true”, Krotevych says. As with the other challenges the Ukrainian military faces, he believes the problems ultimately stem from the leadership. “You know, all our conversations become […] Because of Syrskyi”, he says. This is why Krotevych is keen to emphasize that simply recruiting more soldiers will not lead to victory unless accompanied by fundamental reform. “Even if the National Guard recruits more, and the Azov brigade and other brigades recruit more, they won’t win the war”, he says. “The army wins the war. That’s why I talk about this, that’s why I said that Syrskyi is very bad for the army. Because I’d like to live in this country, and I’d like this country to win, you know?”, he says, with a slight laugh. “And I have a lot of problems with the presidential administration and others, because I said that.”
In recent days, more and more figures have vocally criticized the army’s leadership, as news from the front continues to worsen. However, there are still few signs that the government in Kyiv will change the current Commander-in-Chief. “I think that maybe when we lose Pokrovsk and when Russians make this circle around Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, [and] Druzhkivka, maybe then the president thinks that Syrskyi is unsuitable. Maybe then. For now, I didn’t see the sign at all. But I don’t want to think about why he doesn’t let him go, why he keeps him […] I just want this decline to stop.”
Krotevych doesn’t want to explicitly endorse anyone for the role – possibly out of fear that this might damage the prospects of a proposed replacement. “When someone asked me who can become Commander-in-Chief, I said, ‘anyone’. A person from the street could. And it wouldn’t be worse. And it wouldn’t be worse than Syrskyi.”
I remark that it must be difficult to not find the situation depressing.
“I’m not depressed,” he says. “I’m always angry. I’m angry because I know that we can do better things on the front line. I know that we can win. Even now, we can win. But something must change. And that’s why I’m very angry.”
Additional reporting and translation by Liza Otroshchenko.
This interview was conducted on November 1st, and has been edited for length and clarity.
https://offbeatresearch.com/2025/11/i-know-we-can-win-ukraines-most-famous-soldier-on-the-state-of-war/
