You Don’t Have to Control Your Thoughts, Just Stop Reacting to Them

Welcome back to Silicon. Bites could sacking feather off the one of the worst self-inflicted wounds for Ukraine's war. Russia is celebrating the move, which means it can't be good. And how the decision by Zelensky has brought the cardboard protest back onto the streets. The system strikes back. Zelensky fires Mikhail Feather of the most effective defence minister of the full-scale war after just six months. He sides with the Soviet school general, whose family must be noted still live in Russia, though apparently have cut off ties with him. Feather of the most effective defence minister of the full-scale war, try to reform, take the first tentative steps in what is a massive job. Six months in barely enough time to assemble a competent team, so it seems like his firing is significantly disruptive to the process of reform and precipitous in the extreme. We tend not to delve into Ukrainian domestic politics on the channel, but this theme is too important to ignore. It s bearing on the conduct of the war and on victory too directly and immediately for us to pass it by, so let s dive in. This change has triggered the First Nationwide Street protest since the anti-corruption revolt of July 2025. The Kremlin s newspapers are savoring every line that alone should tell you who won this week in give. And it wasn t Ukraine all the efforts to repel the invaders, unless civic society can get the decision reversed, which is, it has to be admitted a major challenge. Let s explore why 16th July 2026 at 901 in the morning, one minute after the daily nationwide silence for the fallen in this war, Ukrainians walked out onto Franco Square in Kiev with pieces of cardboard in their hands the same square where a year ago almost to the day they forced their president to reverse course and restore the independence of the anti-corruption agencies. The cardboard is back and the signs tell you everything. Don t touch it, it works. Addressed to the president by his affectionate nickname, "Sanich, what the hell? What the hell indeed?" On Wednesday evening of Vladimir Zelensky dismissed Mikhail Fedorov as Minister of Defence six months into the job, six months in which Ukraine blunted the Russian offensive, blinded Russian units by cutting their starling access, strangled Crimea s logistics, set half of Russia s refining industry on fire and for the first time since 2023 pushed Russian territorial gains into negative numbers. The man who presided over that turnaround has been shown the door. Let s not forget the extraordinary campaign over the last two weeks to a trick Russian shipping maritime shipping in the Sea of Ozov and Black Sea as well an extraordinarily bold plan underlining which I m sure are incredible logistics and planning. The general Fedorov clashed with a commander formed in the Soviet military school he gets to keep his job despite widespread discontent with his performance. The replacement is a former police chief. We fear someone cut from these same Soviet cloth and largely unfamiliar with modern drone warfare. The Ukrainian mood on the street understood the meaning of this change within hours. Unfortunately so did Moscow. Tonight what happened? Why happened? And why this is a self-inflicted wound at the worst possible moment? Why may not be a fatal wound? Fortunately just damaging and costly. Damaging of course we mean here in Ukrainian lives. Unfortunately here are these six months that changed the war. We need to remember who Fedorov is. A 35 year old who built there the state in a smartphone that gutted Ukraine s post-Soviet bureaucracy. He used this app, understands how revolutionary the concept is and how it forms the core of everybody s interactions with the state that can now happen online and not through corrupt bureaucrats. The man who in the first hours the full scale invasion publicly asked a lot of musk to switch on Stalinkova Ukraine and got it. And when he assumed the Royal Defence Minister he was able to get those same Stalin switched off on the Russian side. The early evangelist of the army of drones back when the generals still fought in terms of tanks and artillery. Alas some of them still do. Zelensky made him Defence Minister on 14th January 2026. What followed was the most consequential half year. Any Ukrainian Defence Minister has delivered in his farewell post on 15th July. Fedorov listed 22 achievements, stripped out his own framing of this which can of course be a little self-centered and cross-check the record. And the core of what he claims does stand up independently. In February 2026 he worked with SpaceX to cut Russian forces off from unauthorized Stalink. Use writers calls it a crucial intervention and it through Russian battlefield communications into disarray. He built the mid-range strike architecture that is turning occupied Crimea into an island. The campaign we've documented on this channel for months. He redirected end of year payroll funds. This is a genuine gamble into fiber optic FPVs intercept drones, reconnaissance systems, and deep strike platforms. He procured more drones in four months than Ukraine bought in the whole previous year by his own account on Telegram and the numbers do seem to stack up. And he went after the rot, an audit of the Ministry and the Brigades that, as per the economist's 13th July reporting, uncovered roughly 300 billion, herlivna, about $6.7 billion in overspending and waste. Imagine how that redirected money can do good if spent on the right equipment. Halfs for officials, those who refuse the test, lose their jobs, procurement pushed onto open tenders, cutting the price of 155mm shells by 16% that's to give one example. Only, the Financial Times reported that Federer have repeatedly blocked attempts to steer lucrative contracts to favored companies making powerful enemies inside the political and defense establishment. He's pulled onto that last point because this largely is not about personalities, that is his departure, is about the system fighting back. That's our next section here, the Soviet blob fights back. Every reform that Federer launched collided with the same wall, the old defense machine, and the man at its summit, Alexander Siersky, 60 years old, born in Russia, trained at the Moscow Higher Military Command School, formerly in the Soviet Artillery Corps. Credit-Way credits, Juh, Siersky organized the defense of Kiev in 2022, and the Kharkiv counteroffensive that. Autumn, but he is in structure and instinct, a commander of the old school. Yuri Hudmianko, who heads the public anti-corruption council at the defense ministry, puts it pretty precisely in a June interview with N.V. This was a conflict between a young technocrat and a general from a largely post-Soviet military school. The conflict was real. It was sustained and ultimately terminal for Federer in terms of his job at least. Ukraine's good-for-nothing sources, inside the servant of the people, faction described the president recounting the absurd loop Siersky complaining that the ministry wasn't providing for specific operations. Federer of replying that everything had been provided and was being used wrongly, and in the wrong places and around, and around in a loop of mutual incomprehension and suspicion as well as one fears jockeying for power and influence. The economist reported on 13th July that Federer had sought Siersky's dismissal, and that Zelensky had refused. There's a single source claim, but it fits everything else on the record, everything else circumstantial as well, because when the moment came to choose, Zelensky's own words to the MPs as per Ukrainian Pravda were these, ideally both should be replaced, but I cannot do that at the same time. The president concedes that the commander-in-chief is part of the problem then, but he chooses to fire the reformer and keep the unstructured general. He publicly blamed Federer for failing to fix mobilization. However, that's a system that's been broken for a decade, which no minister could rebuild in just six months, and which Zelensky's pre-three previous wartime defence ministers didn't make any inroads into fixing either. And the replacement tells you who won this battle at least temporarily, Ihor Klymeenko, career policeman, national police chief from 2019, 2023 and interior minister since a capable administrator of order no doubt and precisely zero threat to the generals. The war reporter and author Ilia Panamareenko skewed the choice, noting sarcastically as perforbs that Ukraine apparently needs a former top cop who boasts about recruits making their beds with perfect hospital corners as being the ultimate in military achievement and who suits the generals and the big defense contractors just fine. The war reporter and officer of the military, who are not the only one who can be a threat to the enemy. A lawmaker from Zelensky's own party called the dismissal a betrayal. The political analyst, Vladimir Fysenko, told the Kiev Independent there were no fundamental complaints against Fedorov and that changing ministers every six months simply manufactures chaos. This is the anti-reform camp winning a battle the Soviet era blob absorbed the shock of a reformer, waited and then expelled him after only six months. It's the oldest reflex in the post-Soviet state and the tragedy is that this time the president held the door open for the blob to take back control. But the cardboard protests return. The response was immediate and it was not orchestrated. Kasiassinsky, the veteran and former combat medic, organized the July 2025 protest that saved Nabu and Sapo called people to Franco Square at 9.01am. Suspilny confirms he asked for cardboard placards and insisted on peaceful protest. Only thousands came into Kiev as per Bloomberg and as I can see on my social media feeds it was not just Kiev, Kharkiv, Livyiv, Tindy Pro-Adessa, Ivynitsia, Evana Frankyis, Kternopil, Lutsk, Zaporezhya, Oshgorod, Mikolayev, Cherkase, Kmylnyitsky. Rallyers opening with a minutes of silence for the dead then chanting for the dismissed minister, wartime protests to rare and costly in a country under nightly bombardment Kiev was bombarded last night, but Ukrainians came anyway. That is, civil society doing its job, the thing that Russia does not have will never have and cannot comprehend the functioning of the professional military-spoken tomb. Pavla Yelizarev, deputy commander of the Air Force and one of Ukraine's most effective drone commanders resigned on the spot, writing on Facebook as per Euro news, that removing Fedorov is a great evil for the country's defense capability and warning it will cost lives under Russian missiles. Sergis Dernyanka, Fedorov's advisor on drone warfare quit his advisory role, telling his audience Fedorov was the best defense minister in Ukraine's history and called the "sacking" for the independent, the greatest demoralisation since the war began. A protestor named Bogdan Horyak said it plainly to the AP reporters, and then six months later Fedorov is removed from office. Come on! And Moscow, Russian state outlet is Vestia, was gleefully amplifying the economist reporting of the Fedorov Sirsky feud two days before the Axe fell. The protest sign in Mikhailov had it right, Moscow is glad about your decision, where the enemy applaud your personnel choices then you have definitely made the wrong personnel choices. So what does this break and what does it not? Now for the necessary correction, because we are in the heat of emotion, this decision has been made, the protests are live and ongoing now in their first hours. We must address that despair, we must address the decision as well. The deep strike campaign that is bleeding Russia's refineries, the Crimea siege, the drone ecosystem, none of it rests on one man alone. Fedorov built institutions, but there are others who inhabit these institutions and battalions. He built procurement pipelines and generation of drone units and defence tech startups that will outlast his tenure, the interception rates that he cites, drones up from 83% to 91% domestic cruise missile effectiveness from 47% to 87% effectiveness. These reflect these systems and cruise, not a single minister's signature. Ukraine tested a ballistic missile on 14th of July, that program does not stop on Thursday. Fedorov himself signed off with to be continued and he remains as per Ukorenska-Prafters sources on the president's team. This is a wound for sure, but it is not an apt implementation. Zelensky is four and a half years into a war, which has seen no elections, because of course by law they cannot be held and practicality is a wartime occupation, suggest that they cannot be held yet in any case. Zelensky is governing, exhausted, completely exhausted, and this week he spent what little political capital he has left at least amongst Ukrainians to protect a Soviet school general from a reformer. Hours before Russian ballistic missiles killed two more people in Kiev, including a teenager, and on the eve of Kierstarmers farewell visit to Ukraine. July, the cardboard protest forced him to reverse course on Nabu. Within days the president has been set, the street is watching and the street was right. Last time, and the street seems to reflect the mood of the majority now. It took several months for under a yormac to finally be prized from office and his influence to start to be downgraded within the administration. It may well take weeks or months to affect change, but I don't doubt that Ukraine's reform-minded public will stick to this until they get to the change that they demand, and which I think many of them accept is essential to prosecute the war more efficiently and with fewer losses. The verdict is simple and must be said by Ukraine's friends precisely because we are deep friends of Ukraine. Fire in Fedorov after six months was not strategy. It was the system defending itself, a selfish action, a reaction of a dinosaur that is trying to evade the comet, the post-Soviet blob, expelling the man who ordered it, polygraphed it, challenged it, and embarrassed it by making effective changes in a short period of time. Zelensky chose the comfortable general over the uncomfortable reformer and the only capital cities celebrating are entirely the wrong ones, including Moscow, of course. But Ukraine is not the Russian vertical. Ukraine is the country where thousands stand on a square at 901 in the morning under air raid risk, holding cardboard placards telling their president in peaceful terms and with absolute dignity don't touch what works. That reflex, accountability and wartime protest without a single broken window or car being set on fire without riots are articulate people protesting with dignity is exactly the civilizational difference that this war is being fought over. The system won a battle this week, but it will not win the entire argument because Ukrainian civic society has beaten it before and is already back on the square to defend its values. And it is these very values that are driving the defenders to fight, to fight defend their society. Feather of being sacked is a setback, not a defeat. So bring back the reforms, bring back the reformers. Ukraine is winning and evil will not prevail. Partia is a Ukrainian core operating around Kupiansk, which is a critical area of the front. Now this campaign won't be for everybody. It is a kinetic campaign in that we are crowdsourcing here for funds to buy vampire drones. 15 in fact, five of those have already been achieved in this campaign, but we are looking to scale this up to get your full amount of 40,000 dollar US. It's going to jigger's poor that are handling this. This is an incredibly important campaign. There are many creators who are taking part in this. My view is that it's not enough at this point just to help Ukraine to survive. It's not enough just to invest in humanitarian causes. Not everyone's going to be comfortable with this, but they have to remove the invaders from their lands to do that. They need the skills, the munitions, the weaponry to achieve that. This is where these vampire drones come in. So please, this is an a full polished promo. I'm still working on that, but the campaign launches today. Please do check it out and of course help in any way that you can.