Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has submitted his resignation, according to the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk.
Reports are saying that several Ukrainian officials are being fired and recently the country’s Minister of Justice, Minister of Environment and Minister of Strategic Industries resigned.
“The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, submitted a resignation statement to the Verkhovna Rada. The application will be considered during one of the upcoming plenary sessions”, it said.
Kuleba has been foreign minister since 2020 and, along with President Volodymyr Zelensky, is perhaps the Ukrainian politician whose face is most familiar to the public abroad.
However, as early as 2023, there were rumors that he would be fired, but he claimed at the time that he was not worried about such a scenario.
– I work, no job is permanent, and I’m totally calm about everything, he said.
– I said at the very beginning that I would leave under two circumstances: the first is if the president asks me to do it. The second is if I get into some fundamental contradiction with foreign policy and don’t consider it possible to work with it, he continued.
Resignations and dismissals
Ukrainian media, citing anonymous sources, reported yesterday that it was clear that Kuleba would be fired, but that it had not yet been decided who would replace him. However, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has been identified as the most likely candidate.
Recently, several other senior Ukrainian ministers have submitted their resignations – Alexander Kamyshin, Minister of Strategic Industries; Denys Maliuska, Minister of Justice; Ruslan Strilets, Minister of Environment; Olha Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration; and Iryna Vereshchuk, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Reintegration.
Vitalii Koval, head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPFU), also submitted his resignation after only nine months on the job.
It is unclear why there are so many resignations and why they are happening now, but Zelensky has said in the past that he wants to change the composition of the government. In the past, a number of high-ranking Ukrainians have either voluntarily resigned or been fired following corruption allegations – or when dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war became too great.
– Tomorrow is the day of dismissals, and the day after that is the day of appointments, David Arakhamia, parliamentary chairman of Zelenskyi’s (Servants of the People) party, said yesterday.
