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Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi has been named as the new chief of Ukraine’s army. 

The 58-year-old was promoted by Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he removed General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi from the post after months of friction between the pair.

Mr Syrskyi has played a key role in some of Ukraine’s biggest victories – but has also faced criticism for some of his tactics.

Here’s what you need to know about Ukraine’s new army chief.

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From Soviet Union to Ukraine

Mr Syrskyi was born in July 1965 in what is now Russia’s Vladimir region, which was then part of the Soviet Union.

He studied in Moscow at the Higher Military Command School – which has produced commanders in both the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces.

Described as an obsessive planner with iron discipline, some military analysts believe his battlefield tactics reflect his hierarchical Soviet training.

He graduated in 1986 and served in the Soviet Artillery Corps, but did not serve in post-Soviet Russia’s army.

Regardless, senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev called him a “traitor” on his appointment, accusing him of breaking his oath as an officer.

He moved to Ukraine in the 1980s.

The ‘snow leopard’ who became a Ukrainian hero

Mr Syrskyi has commanded troops against combined Russian forces since 2014, when he earned his call sign “snow leopard”.

They fought a Moscow-backed insurgency in eastern Ukraine using “tactics that were similar to how this cat hunts,” he told Reuters in January.

“This creature is very careful, cunning and courageous.”

Mr Syrskyi became head of Ukraine’s land forces in 2019.

Some of Ukraine’s biggest victories of Russia’s full-scale invasion were overseen by Mr Syrskyi.

He led the successful defence of Kyiv in the war’s early months and was later named a Hero of Ukraine, the country’s highest honour, for his role in repelling Moscow’s advance on the capital.

He was credited with orchestrating a lightning counteroffensive that pushed Russian troops away from the city of Kharkiv and retook swathes of land to the east and southeast.

Mr Syrskyi also led the Bakhmut operation, the war’s longest and bloodiest, which has been criticised because of the high losses suffered by Ukrainian forces.

But he has defended the operation, saying Ukraine’s dogged defence of Bakhmut damaged Russia’s overall war effort by tying down the Wagner mercenary group.

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‘Constant innovation’ needed for Ukraine to win

On his first full day in the job, Mr Syrskyi said Ukraine’s path to victory was reliant on constant innovation in the way it fights the war, highlighting technology like drones and electronic warfare.

He also promised to protect the lives and health of Ukrainian forces and ensure reliable logistics.

Can Joe Biden be replaced as the Democrats’ presumptive candidate for November’s US presidential election?

Murmurs around his ability to defeat Republican Donald Trump, 77, in a rematch have only grown louder after a special counsel investigation said President Biden portrayed himself as an “elderly man with a poor memory”.

But with America heading towards the 2024 election, and Mr Biden, 81, dominating the race for the Democratic Party nomination, what happens if he decides to withdraw – or others try to make that choice for him?

Despite weak poll numbers and questions, including from some Democrats, about his age, Mr Biden has stuck to his plan to seek a second term after clearing the field of serious Democratic primary challengers when he announced last year that he was running again.

Minnesota’s Dean Phillips is the only other candidate for the nomination on the ballot, but he isn’t thought to present a serious challenge or have a high enough profile.

The first few state primaries for the Democrats have already taken place – New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

President Biden won all three, meaning the delegates for those states are for now backing him – although New Hampshire’s are slightly different.

What’s more, the deadline for candidates to be registered for many of the remaining 47 states has already passed.

There are 12 contests (11 states and Washington DC) still with time on the clock for a potential new entrant to the Democratic race, but three of those expire on Friday – Connecticut, Indiana and Maryland.

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So if President Biden were to withdraw, say, this week, there would still be time for other Democrats to get their names on the ballot in some states.

But even if they did, a new entrant in the race would have no way of securing a majority of the delegates at the ballot box.

In that case, the nominee would likely have to be decided at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

If this were the case, we may see a broad group of presidential hopefuls such as Vice President Kamala Harris and California Governor Gavin Newsom jockeying to convince the more than 4,000 Democratic delegates to give them the nomination.

“If he drops out before the convention, we will have an old-fashioned convention where the delegates essentially get to make up their mind [on whom to vote for] regardless of who they were elected to represent,” said elections expert Elaine Kamarck, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a member of the Democratic National Committee.

As President Biden’s second-in-command, would the nomination automatically pass to Ms Harris?

Not necessarily. She would likely benefit from their joint campaign infrastructure if she ran for president in his absence, but she has her own popularity issues.

With no heir-apparent to President Biden waiting in the wings, any contest to replace him would be unpredictable.