Major General Igor Skybyuk became the new Chief of the General Staff, he was appointed immediately after the change of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The decree on the appointment appeared on the president’s website a little later than it was announced publicly. This is reported by BBC News Ukraine, the PromPolitInform portal reports.
President Zelenskyy said that he made the decision to appoint the new Chief of the General Staff “together with Mykhailo Drapaty (the new Commander-in-Chief) and Yevhen Khmara (the acting Minister of Defense)”.
In addition, according to Zelensky, it has already been determined “how Oleksandr Syrsky and Andriy Hnatov (Drapatiy and Skybyuk’s predecessors in office – Ed.) will serve to protect our state in the future.”
“It is important that all components of our army continue to function in an absolutely coordinated manner,” the President of Ukraine emphasized.
All these personnel changes in the military leadership took place after the resignation of the government, and with it the Minister of Defense Mykhailo Fedorov. It was his resignation that caused the greatest resonance: Fedorov openly declared a conflict with the then Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky, and daily protests began in many cities of Ukraine, the participants of which demanded Fedorov’s return to his post and the dismissal of the commander-in-chief.
The new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Mykhailo Drapatiy thanked the president for “supporting the decision” to appoint Major General Ihor Skybyuk to his command, who is leaving there from the position of Deputy Chief of the General Staff. Before that, since February 2024, Skybyuk was the commander of the Airborne Assault Forces.
“We met Igor Skybyuk in 2022 in the South of Ukraine, when we were leading the operation to liberate the Kherson region from one command post,” Drapatiy wrote on Facebook. “Since then, I have known him as a commander who can be trusted in difficult circumstances and rely on his decisions, experience and internal principles.”
He recalled that during the time when Skybyuk commanded the Airborne Assault Forces, “strong commanders have grown, including Oleg Apostol, Dmytro Voloshyn, Yevhen Lasiychuk, Svyatoslav Zayets, Emil Ishkulov, Andriy Tkachuk and many others.”
Before Skybyuk headed the Airborne Assault Forces, he was the deputy commander of this unit, and before that, the commander of the 80th separate airborne assault brigade, where he began serving in 1998 as a platoon commander. In general, Skybyuk has been in military service since 1994.
In October of this year, he will turn 50. He was born in Sumy region – in Konotop.
The new Chief of the General Staff studied at the Odessa Institute of Land Forces at the combined arms faculty.
In 2001-2002, he was the commander of a special platoon of a special company of the Ukrainian peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo, in Serbia.
Since 2014, the 80th Airborne Assault Brigade has passed almost all the hot spots of confrontation with Russian attackers, starting from Sloviansk, Luhansk and Donetsk airports and Avdiivka to Ilovaisk and Debaltseve. In addition, he has the Orders of Bohdan Khmelnytsky II and III degrees.
In 2022, Igor Skybyuk led the defense of Kyiv from Russian troops, and in October of the same year he received the title of Hero of Ukraine – for the liberation of Izyum during a counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region.
Since June 2025, Skybyuk has been Deputy Chief of the General Staff.
