Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has tendered his resignation, according to the speaker of Parliament, amid Kyiv’s most extensive cabinet reshuffle since Russia invaded eastern Ukraine in early 2022.
“The Verkhovna Rada [Ukraine’s parliament] has received a resignation letter from Foreign Minister Kuleba,” Ukrainian Parliament Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk wrote on Facebook on Sept. 4.
Kuleba’s resignation request, he added, “will be considered at one of the [assembly’s] soonest plenary meetings.”
Kuleba was appointed Kyiv’s top diplomat in 2020. Since then, he has made numerous high-profile trips abroad to drum up support for Ukraine’s war effort.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to soon name Kuleba’s successor, with Andrii Sybiha, Kyiv’s deputy foreign minister, among the front-runners.
Kuleba’s reported resignation comes amid an ongoing government reshuffle, which saw four cabinet ministers and a deputy prime minister step down from their posts a day earlier.
On Sept. 3, Ukraine’s ministers of justice, environment, reintegration, and strategic industries all tendered their resignations.
On the same day, Olha Stefanishyna, Kyiv’s deputy prime minister for European affairs, also announced her intention to step down.
If the departures are approved by Parliament, they will reportedly leave more than a third of Ukraine’s cabinet portfolios without ministers.
“It’s a government without ministers ... an intellectual and personnel crisis that the authorities are closing their eyes to,” opposition lawmaker Iryna Herashchenko told Reuters.
New appointments will likely be named and approved by the assembly sometime later this week, parliamentary officials said.
According to reports in the Ukrainian press, most—if not all—of the outgoing ministers will be given other government posts.
Critical Juncture
The exact reasons for the sudden raft of resignations remain unclear.On Sept. 3, David Arakhamia, a senior lawmaker and Zelenskyy ally, warned of an imminent “government reset,” which he said could involve the replacement of more than half of Ukraine’s current cabinet.
“Tomorrow, a day of sackings awaits us—and a day of appointments the day after,” he said.
According to Zelenskyy, the leadership shakeup is meant to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs to meet the challenges posed by Russia’s ongoing invasion.
“Autumn will be extremely important for Ukraine,” he said in a Sept. 3 video address. “Our state institutions should be configured so that Ukraine achieves all the results that we need.”
“We must strengthen some areas of the government, and changes in its make-up have been prepared,” Zelenskyy added.
He went on to suggest that the office of Ukraine’s presidency would also likely see “changes.”
On the same day, Zelenskyy’s office announced the dismissal of Rostyslav Shurma, the Ukrainian leader’s deputy chief of staff for economic issues, who for months had faced allegations of graft.
The unfolding cabinet reshuffle in Kyiv comes at a critical juncture in the Russia–Ukraine conflict, which is now well into its third year.
Since early last month, Kyiv has been waging a cross-border offensive in Russia’s Kursk region, to which Moscow has pledged to deliver a “harsh response.”
Meanwhile, Russia has continued to report major gains on the eastern front, where its forces now appear poised to capture the town of Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian logistics hub.
Moscow has also carried out increasingly frequent drone and missile attacks in recent weeks, which have further degraded Ukraine’s beleaguered transport and energy infrastructure.
On Sept. 3, dozens of people, including military personnel, were killed in a massive Russian missile attack on an army college in the Ukrainian town of Poltava.
