Ukraine’s foreign minister resigns in largest shake-up since war began
The reorganization of the administration comes as Russia unleashes a new wave of aerial attacks on cities, including one on Lviv that killed seven overnight.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has submitted his resignation, the country’s parliamentary speaker announced Wednesday, marking the latest major change in Kyiv’s leadership amid the largest government shake-up since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The reorganization of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wartime administration comes at a critical moment for Ukraine, as Russian forces push forward in the east and unleash a new wave of attacks on cities. Overnight into Wednesday, seven people were killed by strikes in the western city of Lviv, which is normally far from the fighting and attacked less frequently than others.
Kuleba, who has served as foreign minister since 2020, was a key voice in Ukraine’s drive to obtain foreign weapons from allies and to push partners to loosen restrictions on how those weapons are used, particularly to combat such bombardments.
Last spring, he led a push to find Patriot air defense batteries that were sitting unused in foreign countries and try to get them moved to Ukraine — speaking bluntly to express the dangers of delays in such deliveries.
Ruslan Stefanchuk, speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, posted a photo of a handwritten letter dated Sept. 4 in which Kuleba asked lawmakers “to accept my resignation from the post of the minister of foreign affairs of Ukraine.”
The day before, several other high-ranking Ukrainian officials also submitted their resignations, including arms chief Oleksandr Kamyshin, who has overseen Ukraine’s efforts to produce weapons domestically, Justice Minister Denys Maliuska, who led a program to recruit convicts to the military, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, who was responsible for the reintegration of occupied territories, and Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna, who has overseen Ukraine’s push to join the European Union.
Environment Minister Ruslan Strilets and Vitaliy Koval, head of Ukraine’s state property fund, also resigned.
Some of those officials are expected to take up new posts in the coming days.
Thirty months into Russia’s invasion, Kyiv is searching for new ways to gain an upper hand as Moscow pushes forward in the east. Zelensky has said he plans to present a “victory plan” on an upcoming visit to the United States, where the presidential election in November could affect the future of a partnership that has ensured Ukraine’s defense.
“Autumn will be extremely important for Ukraine. And our state institutions should be configured so that Ukraine achieves all the results that we need — for all of us,” Zelensky said in his nightly address on Tuesday.
In recent weeks, Russia has launched massive attacks against Ukrainian cities nearly every day. A double ballistic missile strike on a military educational institute and a nearby hospital in the city of Poltava on Tuesday killed more than 50 people. Russia on Wednesday described the attack as a strike on an armed forces training center with foreign instructors.
The attack on Lviv, which struck a residential building, left at least seven people dead, including at least three children. Mayor Andriy Sadoviy shared a photo on Telegram of a man with his wife and three daughters, all smiling with one of the girls holding a bouquet of sunflowers before her.
“After today’s attack, only the man in this photo remains alive,” he wrote. “His wife, Yevgenia, and their three daughters — Yaryna, Daryna, and Emiliya — were killed in their own home.” The oldest of the children was 21, the mayor said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement the target of that attack was military facility manufacturing and repairing missiles and aircraft.
Another attack, on Kryvyi Rih, wounded at least five civilians. Recent attacks have also targeted Kyiv and the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which sits just 18 miles from the border, making it especially vulnerable to Russian missiles, glide bombs and drones.
Ukraine is pleading for partners, including the United States, to lift restrictions that have thus far prevented Kyiv from using Western weapons for long-range strikes inside Russia. Washington lifted some restrictions on strikes in May, after Ukraine failed to thwart a cross-border attack into the Kharkiv region that could have led to a dangerous encirclement of the major city. But Ukrainian officials say the slight easing of restrictions to allow certain cross-border attacks does not go far enough.
“The capacity of Ukraine to strike military targets deep inside of Russia and diminish the Russian capacity for air attacks on Ukraine lays with the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany,” Kuleba said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday, shortly before submitting his resignation. “They have to do two things basically: First, to make a decision that allows us to strike these military airfields where strategic bombers take off carrying missiles and bombs, and second, to provide us with a sufficient amount of those missiles.”
“This is not rocket science,” he added. “This is just a very banal issue of making the right decisions on time.”
Last month, Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region and attacked Belgorod, another border region. The move appeared intended to divert troops and pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin, potentially into a territorial swap. But Putin has remained focused on the fight in the east of Ukraine, even as Kyiv now controls some 500 square miles of Russian territory and holds hundreds of new Russian prisoners of war.