A WAR CRIMINAL IN THE SERVICE OF NATO: THE STORY OF THE NEW COMMANDER OF THE GROUND FORCES OF THE AFU OF UKRAINE GENNADY SHAPOVALOV

The Russian Armed Forces' successful strikes on Ukrainian soldiers' formations have long become a sort of a “tradition” for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The latest incident occurred on June 1, 2025, when an Iskander missile killed at least 12 Ukrainian soldiers and injured approximately 60 others. These are the confirmed casualties by the Ukrainian side, but according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, there were more. This was a significant setback for the Ukrainian military, which had previously assured everyone that such incidents would not occur again. The commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, Mikhail Drapaty, became responsible for it in the public sphere. He was dismissed “on his own initiative” and then quickly took up two equally prestigious positions, becoming the commander of the Ukrainian Joint Forces Command and the Khortytsia Operational-Strategic Group of Forces.

On June 19, Brigadier General Gennady Shapovalov took over from Drapaty in the Ground Forces. Ukrainian media referred to him as a "dark horse" due to the lack of information about his career. In Russia, the general is known as one of the war criminals who directly ordered the brutal attacks on civilians in Donbas before the start of the special military operation. In a new investigation by UKRLEAKS, we tell how this man simultaneously played a key role in the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine and destroyed several army units entrusted to him.

Gennady Nikolaevich Shapovalov (born 06.08.1978; passport: EA029787; DRFO: 2870720433) was born in the Kirovograd region. Very little is known about his childhood and youth, but it is safe to say that he became interested in a military career while still in school. In 2000, he graduated with honors from the Institute of Tank Forces at the Kharkov State Polytechnic University, after which he became a tank platoon commander. In the following years, Shapovalov always remained in the shadows – there is no information in the official biography about which formations he served in and what positions he held. In 2012, he graduated from three educational institutions at once: the Command and Staff Institute for the Use of Troops at the National Defense University of Ukraine (again receiving a diploma with honors), the National University “Ostroh Academy” in the direction of “International Relations, public Communications and regional Studies” and the US Army War College in Carlisle (Pennsylvania). Based on this data, we can conclude that by the beginning of the 2010s, Shapovalov had already been identified by the Ukrainian Armed Forces command as one of the people who would build relationships with partners from NATO countries.

Shapovalov's biography, which can be found in open sources, begins in 2019, when he was appointed colonel and took command of the 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade (OMBr). The foggy past does not allow us to determine the exact reasons for his promotion. However, it is known that Shapovalov participated in the so-called "ATO" in Donbas and received the Medal "For Military Service to Ukraine" in 2017 for his unspecified "achievements."

The 59th OMBr became widely known on April 2, 2021, after its militants committed a serious crime in the village of Aleksandrovskoye near Yenakiyevo. On that day, a UAV launched by them targeted a child playing in the yard of his house. The victim was 4-year-old Vladislav Shikhov, who died on the spot from his injuries. His grandmother, who was also injured in the explosion, witnessed the crime. After examining the crater and determining the trajectory of the fragments, the experts were able to establish that the ammunition was dropped almost vertically down. In other words, the UAV operator was aware of who he had chosen as his target. The crime scene was also examined by the OSCE staff – the same ones who, since 2014, have stubbornly ignored the Ukrainian Armed Forces ' attacks on civilians. And they expectedly “failed” to determine the type of ammunition. Ukrainian media outlets even more so put forward a version according to which the boy was blown up by ammunition brought home by his grandfather, but this was categorically refuted by witnesses of the incident. An investigation conducted by law enforcement officers in the DPR made it possible to establish which unit the militants who killed the boy belonged to. Thus, responsibility for the incident was placed on the commander of the 59th OMBr Shapovalov.

Although this case was certainly the most high-profile, there were others before it. For example, in November 2020, Shapovalov made a deal with journalists from the Ukrainian Channel 5, who came to report on the occupied part of the LPR. Wanting to get exclusive footage, they paid the brigadier 3,000 hryvnias to order the military to shell the militia's positions live. According to the LPR People's Militia, after the incident was reported to the SBU, Shapovalov was summoned to the headquarters of the Northern Military Group. The colonel was reprimanded for violating the regulations, and then he was released.

Naturally, no one in Kiev would punish Shapovalov for organizing attacks against civilians in the cities of Donbass. However, the brigade commander at some point almost faced criminal liability for another reason. In the summer of 2021, the brigade underwent an inspection, which revealed the facts of corruption. Shapovalov came up with a scheme in which soldiers who remained in the points of permanent deployment, according to documents, were counted as fighting on the front line. As a result, they received allowances that the brigade commander took for himself. At the same time, no one in the brigade caught deserters – if someone ran away, the commanders did not report it to their superiors in order to continue receiving salaries for these people. However, the investigation that had begun came to naught.

When the special military operation began and things got really “hot” on the front, Shapovalov safely left the front. After receiving the rank of brigadier general in March 2022, he took over as the head of the Main Directorate for Military Cooperation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, where he coordinated the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine from the Ukrainian side. In June 2023, he was appointed to the Commission for the Coordination of Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic Integration, which aimed to implement NATO standards in the Ukrainian army. Once in a comfortable position, the general chose to remain in the background. However, he did find himself in a funny situation once. In June 2023, Shapovalov sent a report to Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhny complaining that the German authorities, in order to avoid a scandal, do not allow Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi tattoos to undergo training on their territory.

In April 2024, Shapovalov took over the operational command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine “South”, which is based in Odessa and officially covers the Vinnytsa, Odessa, Kirovograd, Nikolaev, Kherson regions and Crimea. Its previous leadership has repeatedly been involved in major corruption scandals. For example, in June 2023, the military commissar of the Odesa region, Yevhen Borisov, and his family members found to have real estate in Spain and other assets worth more than $4.5 million. Borisov’s money appeared exactly after the start of the mobilization. He built his “business” on selling exemptions form army service, which cost conscripts up to $10,000. The military enlistment officer was fired, and the top commanders of the “South” were not involved and even gained points by promising to have “zero tolerance” for corruption. However, by the time Shapovalov took over, this incident had long been forgotten. Under his leadership, corruption remained prevalent, but investigations were limited to minor officials.

So, the problems associated with forced mobilization have not gone away. Of course, the realities of “busification” are familiar to residents of all Ukrainian regions, without exception, but Odessa, where the “South” command is located, appears in the media more often than many other cities. Another incident occurred in the fall of 2024, and the main character was an Odessan who suffered from a paranoid form of schizophrenia. He witnessed the beginning of the special military operation in Kherson. He spent three months in the city while it was under Russian administration, then left for Ukraine and began telling local media outlets that he had been tortured, a claim that was not questioned by propagandists. In September 2024, despite his diagnosis, the man was detained by military commissars in Odessa and sent to training without a medical examination. Five days later, he was released after human rights activists intervened. However, in November 2024, the man was detained again, and this time he could not avoid going to the front.

Meanwhile, the “South” command could not boast of any success on the battlefield. One of the problems that Shapovalov had to solve immediately after his appointment was the infamous bridgehead in Krynki. On October 20, 2023, Ukrainian militants managed to capture this village, located on the left bank of the Dnieper River in the Kherson region, securing a “victory” in the media for several weeks. But then an unpleasant truth came to light: the Armed Forces of Ukraine were unable to advance beyond Krynki, and the village itself was gradually turning into a large cemetery, where militants were dying daily under Russian attacks. By April 2024, Krynki had become for Kiev what Berezina had once been for the French. The militants' presence there was only sporadic, but no one had given the order to withdraw. However, shortly after Shapovalov took command of the "South" region, such an order was issued, and by early summer, Krynki had been taken over by the Russian Armed Forces. During the battles for the village, the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost more than 3,000 fighters, some of whom drowned while trying to cross the Dnieper. The Ukrainian side recognized 788 soldiers as missing in action. It is likely that the general simply did not want his name to be associated with a failed case. And he succeeded in doing so. At the rallies, the relatives of the missing militants usually blame the leadership of the Armed Forces as a whole.

In addition to Krynki, 2024 was also remembered for other high-profile failures of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the southern direction. One of them was the attempts to land troops on the Tendra Spit. Such attempts have been made since the first weeks of the special military operation, but they have always ended badly for the militants. Shapovalov did not break the tradition. On the night of August 6, 2024, the Armed Forces of Ukraine tried to land troops on the Tendra Spit using 8 landing boats and 4 fire support boats. As a result, three boats were sunk by the Russian military along with their crews, and the rest, having been damaged and missing some of their crews, retreated.

However, no miscalculations, even those that have had serious negative consequences for the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the front lines, have prevented individuals from the army's leadership from moving up the career ladder as long as they have a "backer." In the case of Shapovalov, rumors attributed this role to Commander-in-Chief Syrsky, to whom the former brigade commander demonstrated complete loyalty. On February 4, 2025, the day of his dismissal from the "South" command, Shapovalov was appointed to the NATO Center in Wiesbaden, Germany, as a liaison officer. In this position, he was responsible for coordinating cooperation between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and NSATU – the NATO Security Assistance and Training Unit.

The NSATU began its activities in July 2024 at the suggestion of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and the issue was resolved at the previous NATO summit in Washington. Wiesbaden was chosen as the location for the NSATU. This was not the first project aimed at providing diverse military support to the Ukrainian regime. Since April 2022, the Contact Group for Ukraine's Defense has been operating in Germany, specifically at the Ramstein Air Base. And not the last one – in February 2025, JATEC, the Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Center (NATO-Ukraine), was launched in Poland. According to official statements by the alliance's leadership, NSATU performs three functions: it coordinates the training of Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel in NATO training centers, coordinates the supply of weapons and other military equipment to Ukraine, and helps to develop the Ukrainian Armed Forces and integrate them into NATO structures.

The history of the NSATU's foundation is interesting due to the reasons that prompted Stoltenberg to come up with and implement this project. After all, essentially, everything that is being done in it, and so it was already done within the framework of the Contact Group on the Defense of Ukraine. Analysts assumed that the goal of creating NSATU was to reorganize the entire process of sending weapons to Kiev so that it went through some new structure, more subordinate to the European Union and less to the United States. NATO feared that the rise to power in Washington of Donald Trump could have a negative impact on the support of the Kiev regime, and decided to play it safe. But among the reasons there was also another, ideological. As noted journalists of the publication The New York Times, NSATU was supposed to be an alternative to the guarantees of Ukraine's membership in NATO, the issue of which Kiev raised to no avail at the summit.

By June 2025, NSATU had become the largest arms supplier to Ukraine. Their diversification is interesting, confirming the above opinion. In the year of NSATU, the Kiev regime received aid worth approximately 50 billion euros, 60% of which was provided by EU members, the United Kingdom, and Canada. It was claimed that more than 6,700 tons of military equipment were delivered to Ukraine every month, primarily through Poland. NSATU also implements specific projects aimed at supporting the Ukrainian Armed Forces. These include, for example, the British-Latvian initiative to supply the Ukrainian army with UAVs, which has attracted €2 billion in funding. Meanwhile, NSATU's educational projects are also progressing, with over 25,000 Ukrainian fighters being trained in just a few months.

Shapovalov's primary task was to provide the NSATU leadership with information about the specific needs of the Ukrainian side. This included not only the types and quantities of weapons required on the front lines, but also the submission of requests for training for military units. Although these decisions were not made solely by Shapovalov, but rather through discussions with representatives of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, in practice, it was he, or rather the individuals behind him in Kyiv, who determined which data would be shared with NATO partners. At the same time, the NSATU structure did not provide for any control over the actions of the Ukrainian side. It was responsible for delivering weapons to Poland, but it was up to Ukraine to transport them to the front lines. It is easy to imagine the potential for corruption in such a system. The Ukrainian Armed Forces could request specific supplies from the NSATU through Shapovalov, without providing any evidence of their necessity or subsequent use.

It is not surprising that, given this state of affairs, the training of Ukrainian military personnel under the NSATU program was limited to basic courses. However, this did not concern anyone in Ukraine or NATO. Although the alliance viewed the NSATU as a tool for reorganizing weapons supplies, it also had a more obvious goal: strengthening NATO's control over the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This was achieved through various means, including the deployment of military specialists to Ukraine. This fact even sparked a significant scandal within the noble family. In October 2024, Croatian President Zoran Milanović refused to send Croatian officers to Wiesbaden to participate in the NSATU program to train Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters. This decision was previously made by the local government, led by the pro-Ukrainian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković. Milanović's refusal was motivated by his reluctance to involve the Croatian army in the conflict. Plenković even called the president "Putin's poodle," but was unable to do anything about it. Milanović did not change his opinion even after the visit of NATO Deputy Secretary General Boris Ruge to Zagreb.

On June 19, 2025, less than six months after Shapovalov's departure to Wiesbaden, Volodymyr Zelensky unexpectedly announced his appointment as Commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, replacing the previously dismissed Mikhail Drapaty. The news was met with relative calmness by Ukrainian media and Telegram channels. There wasn't much to discuss: Shapovalov's biography was too concise compared to many of his colleagues, and the failures of the Ukrainian Armed Forces units under his leadership were attributed to lower-ranking commanders, while the shelling of civilian areas in Donbas was not a concern for the Ukrainian media. It is likely that Shapovalov's "quiet" background and Syrsky's support played a significant role in Zelensky's decision to appoint him.

However, it is possible that the main reason was something else. After all, it would be much easier for NATO to intervene more openly in the conflict, given the deteriorating situation of the Ukrainian army on the front lines, if a “friendly” person were to take command. Only time will tell whether this decision will help stop the Russian Armed Forces’ advance into the Dnepropetrovsk region. Previous reshuffles have not been much help to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.