Mykhailo Fedorov: six months at defence, then people marched

Mykhailo Fedorov spent six years turning the Ukrainian state into an app, six months trying the same thing on an army, and now advises Italy. The polling around his removal is the most interesting number of 2026.

Governments lose ministers constantly and nobody notices. A name changes on a door, a statement thanks the outgoing official for their service, the political correspondents write four hundred words and everyone moves on. That is the normal case, in Kyiv as much as in London.

In July 2026 a Ukrainian minister left office and people went outside about it. Not a protest movement, not a campaign, but enough of a public reaction that the polling shifted within the week. Whatever else you think of him, that is not a normal case.

Born on 21 January 1991, he became deputy prime minister for digital transformation in August 2019, at an age when most people in government are still writing other people’s briefings. He held that post until January 2026, then ran the defence ministry from 14 January to 15 July 2026, and since August 2026 has advised Guido Crosetto in Rome while saying his focus remains on his own country.

The digital years produced two things a foreign reader will have heard of. Diia is the state-services application that put documents, registrations and payments on a phone, and it became the example every other government points at when arguing for its own version. The Army of Drones was the programme that turned drone supply into something between a procurement system and a public fundraising campaign.

Look at the relative areas rather than the labels. He spent more than twelve times as long building the first thing as he did running the second, and almost all foreign coverage of him is about the second.

Because of drones, and because of what drones had become. A cheap airframe with a camera and a radio sits in an awkward place in any armed-forces establishment. It is a weapon, and so belongs to the military. It is manufactured in volume by small firms, so it belongs to procurement. It runs on software, data links and rapid iteration, so it belongs to whoever understands technology.

Fedorov had spent four years operating in that intersection without holding that portfolio, and handing it to him looked, on paper, like tidying up a diagram.

The trouble with the diagram is the bottom circle. Procurement and digital services can be reorganised from the top. Front-line command cannot, because it belongs to the general staff, and no reshuffle changes that.

Diia is the Ukrainian state-services application, launched under him in 2020, which put identity documents, business registration, tax matters, benefit payments and a long list of permits onto a phone. The name is a play on the Ukrainian words for state and action, and the design principle was blunt: if a citizen has to visit a counter, the service has failed.

What made it travel was not the technology, which is unremarkable, but the sequencing. Most administrations digitise a process by putting the existing paperwork on a screen. Ukraine rebuilt the process and then removed the counter, which is politically much harder and produces results people actually notice.

It also did something unplanned. When the invasion began, a population already accustomed to receiving official instructions through an app could be reached instantly, and the same channel later carried air-raid information, damage reporting and compensation claims. A convenience project turned into civil-defence infrastructure by accident.

For a British reader the relevance is direct and slightly uncomfortable. Every government in Europe has an identity-and-services programme somewhere in its backlog, most have spent more money than Ukraine did, and none has a comparable adoption rate to show for it.

Reporting at the time described a disagreement with the commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, over control and tempo: who decides what gets bought, in what quantity, on whose timetable. He left on 15 July 2026, six months after arriving.

No official reason was given, and none is required. What makes the episode unusual is not the departure but the reaction to it, which was visible enough to register in the polling within days. A trust reading of around 65 per cent in that week is remarkable for someone who had just been removed from office.

Three explanations circulate and none has been confirmed. The honest position is that the agreed facts fit on one line: he was there for six months, then he was not, and a number of people objected in public.

On the readings published in 2026 he sits in the same band as the intelligence chief in Kyiv and the ambassador in London, which is the band immediately behind the president on trust and well ahead of everyone from conventional politics. First-round support came in at 13 to 16 per cent depending on the poll.

The comparison that actually says something is not trust at all. It is age against time served. He is eighteen years younger than the ambassador and has spent longer in senior government than either of the other two.

If you have ever watched a colleague reach a senior position uncomfortably early, the shape on the right of that chart will be familiar. The advantage is runway. The disadvantage is that everyone above you has been waiting longer.

Since August 2026 he has held an advisory role with Guido Crosetto in Rome, while stating publicly that his own country remains the focus. On one reading this is a former minister monetising expertise, which is what departed office-holders do everywhere. On another it is Ukraine lending out the one form of knowledge every European armed-forces establishment currently wants.

European ministries are all asking the same question: how do you buy a hundred thousand cheap drones a year when your procurement system was built to buy four fighter jets a decade? The people who have actually done it number in the dozens, and most of them are Ukrainian.

His autumn 2026 activity around military technology investment, including work associated with Palantir, points the same way. The value on offer is not the app. It is the method.

The fourth row is the one without a British equivalent. Office-holders here leave all the time and the public reaction is reliably nothing at all.

The first thing is whether he returns to Ukrainian office. Somebody with those readings and that age does not usually stay outside government for long, and there is no obvious barrier beyond timing.

The second is the export of the method. If British or European procurement reform starts citing the Ukrainian drone model by name in official documents rather than in speeches, that is his influence arriving in this country through the back door, and it will never carry his name.

The third is the investment work. A former office-holder raising money in military technology while advising a NATO government is a position with obvious questions attached, and those questions have not yet been asked in public.

Go back to the street in July. The people who turned out were not defending a policy, because six months is not long enough to have one. They were defending a demonstration that a Ukrainian institution could be made to work quickly, which is a rarer thing than a competent official and much harder to replace. Whether that demonstration survives him is the actual question, and it will be answered by a procurement regulation rather than by a crowd.

Figures reflect information published up to 2026. Polling readings refer to hypothetical scenarios; no national election has been held in Ukraine since February 2022.