Dmytro Kuleba at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin, Germany, on Tuesday, June 11, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg |
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba resigned during the war, Ukrainian parliamentary speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said on Wednesday.
“The motion will be examined at one of the next plenary sessions,” the parliamentary speaker added in a Google-translated post on the social media platform Facebook.
Kuleba, 43, took office as Ukraine's foreign minister in March 2020 and has been a stalwart figure at the forefront of Kyiv's concerted campaign for international favor in the fight against the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by neighboring Russia since February 2022. He previously served as Ukraine's permanent representative to the Council of Europe from 2016 to 2019.
CNBC has asked the State Department for comment.
Kuleba's possible resignation follows similar resignations by a number of Ukrainian ministers on Tuesday, reported by state news agency Ukrinform, including Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories, Iryna Vereshchuk, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration. Olga Stefanishyna, Minister for Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin and Minister of Justice Denys Maliuska.
David Arakhamia, chairman of the Servant of the People faction in parliament, had announced a comprehensive and “major reboot of the government” for this week.
“More than 50% of the workforce of [Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine] will change,” he said in a post on Telegram translated by Google on Tuesday. “Tomorrow is the day of dismissals, and the day after tomorrow is the day of appointments.”
In his evening speech on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signaled that there would also be a change in the highest political ranks of Ukraine.
“The fall will be extremely important for Ukraine. And our state institutions must be set up so that Ukraine achieves all the results we need – for all of us. To do this, we need to strengthen some areas in the government – and personnel decisions have been prepared,” he said, adding that the expected personnel changes will mean that “certain areas” of Kyiv's foreign and domestic policy will receive a “slightly different emphasis”.
“We need a new level of simultaneous information work, both cultural and diplomatic. And a new level of relations with the global Ukrainian community. Now is the time to bring new strength to Ukraine's government institutions, and I am grateful to everyone who helps with this,” he said.
At the time, Zelensky did not provide any information about the names of the people who were to be dismissed or appointed.
Similar to the battlefield, Ukraine is waging a diplomatic war on several fronts, vaguely seeking international financial and military support on the one hand, but also trying to clean up its corruption record in the country and seek accession to the European Union on the other.
The potential change at the top of Ukraine's foreign policy comes just two months before the election of new leadership in key ally Washington. The US administration under Joe Biden – including Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris – has so far staunchly supported Ukraine in its fight against Russia. But the long-term support of former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump, who previously promised to end the war between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours, remains to be seen.
Comments are closed.