Ukraine’s parliament had voted to dismiss Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal after his five-year stint at the position on Wednesday, July 16.
Shmyhal submitted his resignation a day prior amid a major government shakeup, where he is expected to take up the role of defense minister, with his first deputy, Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko, expected to head the government.
Lawmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak wrote on Telegram that 261 lawmakers voted in favor of dismissing Shmyhal’s government on Wednesday afternoon, where another round of voting will take place on Thursday to determine the new prime minister.
While the dismissal of the prime minister normally means the dissolution of his government, the martial law currently in place means the cabinet of ministers will retain its power, as pointed out by Ukrainska Pravda, citing the law itself.
“Now all the ministers are ‘acting,’ tomorrow they have to appoint a new Shmyhal and complete this bed-moving,” Zheleznyak wrote.
Zheleznyak also shared a video of Shmyhal making a speech at the parliament while being ignored by most lawmakers.
Denys Shmyhal served as Ukraine’s prime minister since 2020. In February-March 2020, he was deputy prime minister and minister for communities and territories development under Oleksiy Honcharuk’s government.
From 2019 to 2020, he headed the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional State Administration. Between 2017 and 2019, he worked in companies affiliated with Rinat Akhmetov. From 2015 to 2017, he was involved in retail, serving as CEO and supervisory board member of Lvivkholod.
Earlier, he had worked in the Lviv Regional Administration and in business, and also served as an assistant to lawmaker Roman Chernega of the UDAR party in the 7th convocation of the Verkhovna Rada.
Shmyhal graduated from Lviv Polytechnic with a degree in industrial management and holds the title of engineer-economist. He earned a PhD in economics and completed training programs in Belgium, Canada, Georgia, Finland, and Germany.