As his popularity fades Volodymyr Zelensky culls his cabinet
ON WEDNESDAY UKRAINE’S parliament convened to approve an unexpected wave of resignations. It was the start of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s first major wartime shake-up, a merry-go-round of promotions and dispatches to irrelevance. The president had wanted a quick show to bamboozle his way to the headlines. The result, which saw even members of his own party mocking the proceedings, and three of the seven votes failing, hinted at increasing dysfunction within the government.
Those lined up for dismissal included heavyweights. Two deputy prime ministers, Iryna Vereschuk and Olga Stefanishyna. The justice minister, Denys Maliuska. The charismatic, ponytailed head of the ministry of strategic industries, Oleksandr Kamyshin. Environment minister, Ruslan Strilets, and the head of the State Property Fund, Vitalii Koval. Perhaps the best known of those departing is Dmytro Kuleba (pictured), the long-time foreign minister. Explaining his reshuffle, Mr Zelensky said the country needed a “new structure.” He will not have missed the massive drop in government popularity registered by polls in recent months. With elections cancelled during the war, this was one of the only levers he could pull.
Tensions between the president and his foreign minister have been growing since the start of full-scale invasion in 2022. Before then, the two men’s careers dovetailed. Mr Zelensky pulled the nerdy diplomat from relative obscurity in 2019, first making him deputy prime minister, then foreign minister. A sharp communicator with rounded glasses—more Harry Potter than John Lennon—and Vivienne Westwood ties, Mr Kuleba became respected among foreign diplomats in Kyiv and in the West. But in the end his sophisticated diplomacy did not always align with the raw and emotional rhetoric of his boss.
To the president’s office, the complaint was that Mr Kuleba avoided getting his hands dirty. “They think he just liked to collect victories,” says one MP from the president’s bloc. “He doesn’t see things through.”
Insiders suggest Mr Kuleba’s fate was sealed in April when Andriy Sybiha, rumoured to be his replacement, was moved from the president’s office to become a deputy minister. Several sources close to the president suggested that pressure from America’s State Department prevented the switch from happening then. With election season under way in America, the focus is now elsewhere, one source notes.
American pressure does however appear to be behind another change in Mr Zelensky’s top team, with Rostyslav Shurma, an influential but controversial presidential adviser, stepping away from his backroom role. Oleksandr Kamyshin, the outgoing minister of strategic industries, is expected to take over part of Mr Shurma’s portfolio. In normal times, the move from minister to presidential adviser could be seen as a demotion. Insiders say that in a time of the increased power of the presidential office, the opposite is true. Two sources suggest that Herman Smetanin, the 32-year-old head of Ukraine’s state defence company is likely to replace Mr Kamyshin at the ministry.
Given the centralisation that has already happened during wartime, the ministerial changes are unlikely to have a serious impact—either on the government or the front lines in eastern Ukraine, which are looking increasingly precarious. Several sources, however, describe the changes as a further consolidation of power around Volodymyr Zelensky’s influential chief of staff Andriy Yermak. “They had loyal people around them,” says Yaroslav Zhelezhnyk, an opposition MP. “But they now have even more loyal ones.” ■
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