Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister Dmytro Kuleba has resigned as the biggest shake-up of the wartime government gathered pace in Kyiv on Wednesday.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the wave of ministerial resignations is part of an effort to “give new strength” to Ukraine’s institutions.
Parliament Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk published a photo of Kuleba’s resignation letter on Facebook. The foreign minister did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his decision.
The reshuffle comes at a crucial point in the 30-month-long war, with Kyiv trying to hold off Moscow’s escalating offensive in eastern Ukraine while simultaneously rushing to solidify its grip on about 1,000 sq km of territory it has seized inside Russia’s Kursk region.
“Autumn will be extremely important for Ukraine. And our state institutions must be set up in such a way that Ukraine will achieve all the results we need — for all of us,” Zelenskyy said in his evening address on Tuesday. “To do this, we need to strengthen some areas in the government — and personnel decisions have been prepared.”
He said more changes were likely to happen within his office and that “certain areas of our foreign and domestic policies will have a slightly different emphasis”.
Kyiv has been seeking to turn the war in its favour with its audacious incursion into Russia last month and to strengthen its position ahead of any possible peace negotiations. The moves follow several difficult months during which it has lost ground on the battlefield in the Donetsk region and suffered rolling nationwide blackouts because of Russian air strikes on its energy infrastructure.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the reshuffle would not have any impact on the prospects of resuming negotiations with Kyiv.
“No, it’ll have no impact,” Peskov told reporters on a call on Wednesday. “You see the attitude to prospects of a negotiation process. In the past few days especially, you can see how tense the situation is. But of course, we are closely following developments.”
Seven people including three children were killed and another 47 were injured when Russian ballistic missiles struck the historic centre of Lviv before dawn on Wednesday, according to authorities in the western Ukrainian city.
Many personnel changes have been made to Ukraine’s government since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, including the replacement of the defence minister, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the heads of its foreign and domestic intelligence services and national security office.
But David Arakhamia, the head of Zelenskyy’s ruling Servant of the People group in parliament, wrote on Telegram that more than half of Ukraine’s current cabinet would be moved or replaced in the coming days.
“As promised, a major reboot of the government can be expected this week,” he said late on Tuesday. Wednesday would be “the day of lay-offs, and the day after . . . the day of appointments”, he added.
The overhaul has been months in the making, according to government officials who spoke to the Financial Times on the condition of anonymity. It did not come as a surprise to Ukraine’s political elite and western diplomats in Kyiv.
The shake-up is partly aimed at making Ukraine’s cabinet, which at present has five acting ministers, a fully fledged governing body. “The government barely has quorum,” noted one MP. Acting ministers cannot vote in the cabinet.
Some of the ministers who submitted resignations are likely to remain in government but will take on new roles or expanded portfolios, several of the officials who quit told the FT.
Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, was among those who submitted resignations on Tuesday evening, she confirmed to the FT.
Stefanishyna, who was appointed in 2020, has led Ukraine’s drive to join the EU. She hoped she would receive an expanded mandate in the reshuffle that is likely to include the justice ministry portfolio. “But thing[s] could change along the way, as always in politics. Especially in [Ukraine],” she said.
Iryna Vereshchuk, deputy prime minister for the reintegration of temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, followed with her own resignation.
Earlier on Tuesday, Stefanchuk said he had received resignation letters from strategic industries minister Oleksandr Kamyshin, justice minister Denys Malyuska, environmental protection and natural resources minister Ruslan Strilets and Vitaliy Koval, head of the state property fund.
The parliamentary Speaker said on Facebook that their requests would be considered by lawmakers at one of the next parliamentary sessions.
A person close to Kamyshin said he was expected to be appointed to another position in the government or within the Zelenskyy administration. Kamyshin previously headed Ukraine’s state railway company and was credited with keeping trains running despite the war. Since then, he has spearheaded the revival of domestic arms production.
Zelenskyy also dismissed Rostislav Shurma, a deputy head of his presidential office in charge of economic and energy policy.
The shifts came after Ukraine’s energy chief Volodymyr Kudrytskyi was removed, but complaints followed about his departure being “politically motivated”.
The move heightened fears for the country’s electricity grid, since Kudrytskyi, who had led state-owned operator Ukrenergo since 2020, was a respected figure in the energy industry.
Additional reporting from Polina Ivanova in Berlin
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