Ukraine sacks two senior ministers at heart of wartime economy

Ukraine’s parliament voted on Thursday (9 May) to sack the deputy prime minister for infrastructure and the farm minister, removing two senior officials who have held key portfolios for the wartime economy.

A majority of 272 lawmakers voted to dismiss Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov, who oversaw the reconstruction programme and championed efforts to set up a Black Sea shipping lane during a de-facto Russian blockade.

The exit of the 41-year-old comes amid plans to break up his powerful ministry into two separate portfolios, lawmakers said.

“We expect the government will make a decision to separate the ministries. Then later in the second half of May, the new appointments will be made,” Yevhenia Kravchuk, a lawmaker from the ruling Servants of the People party, said on national television.

Kubrakov said on Facebook that his dismissal had not been discussed with him in advance and that he had not been given a chance to defend his tenure in a presentation to parliament.

Lawmakers also accepted the resignation of Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky who is being investigated for alleged involvement in an illegal acquisition of state-owned land.

The 44-year-old denies the allegations.

The government now has five vacant ministerial positions, said Oleksiy Honcharenko, a lawmaker from the opposition European Solidarity party.

There are over 20 ministerial portfolios in the current government.

Officials have repeatedly said they plan to reform the government’s structure and cut the number of ministries as the country faces a huge budget deficit with most state revenues allocated towards defence efforts.

Iryna Friz, a lawmaker from the European Solidarity party, criticised any suggestion of increasing the number of ministries.

“This chaotic activity will hurt the efficiency of the ministries,” she said. “This chaotic approach is not right and is damaging especially as we are now in a wartime period.”

Kubrakov’s giant ministry was set up in December 2022.

As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy approaches the end of his five-year term this month and with no elections scheduled because of the war, some politicians have called on him to form a government of national unity instead.

Special operations chief replaced, again

Zelenskyy replaced the commander of his special forces on Thursday, the second time in half a year that he has changed the head of the unit which operates in Moscow-occupied territories.

The dismissal of Colonel Serhiy Lupanchuk and appointment of Brigadier General Oleksandr Trepak in his place was announced in two decrees on the president’s website that provided no explanation for the move.

Since 2014, Trepak has been actively participating in defence operations in east Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists. He was engaged in leading the push to repel the Russian assault on Donetsk airport, one of the biggest operations back then.

The Ukrainian military’s chain of command has been changed at different levels since February when Zelenskyy replaced his top commander, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, with then-ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi in a major shake up.

At the time, Zelenskyy said a new military leadership was taking control of the armed forces and promised to “reboot” the system by bringing in experienced commanders who understood the daily needs of the troops.

The shakeup came at an uncertain time for Ukraine with Russian troops beginning to advance in the east, taking advantage of shortages of Ukrainian manpower at the front as well as dwindling stocks of artillery shells.

In a separate decree on Thursday, Zelenskyy also reappointed Dmytro Hereha as commander of the army’s support forces, a post he was dismissed from without any explanation in March.

Lupanchuk was appointed to lead the special forces last November following the sudden dismissal of his predecessor Viktor Horenko.

Horenko’s dismissal was seen at the time as a sign of a growing rift between Zelenskyy and his then top commander who was fired months later.

The special forces do not have a public profile, but are thought to have been involved in Ukraine’s most ambitious operations in Russian-held areas and in particular the peninsula of Crimea.

(Edited by Georgi Gotev)

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