Rada Approves New Cabinet – Who Are They?

Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada approved a new Cabinet of Ministers proposed by the newly appointed Prime Minister Serhiy Koretsky.

According to Liga.net on Thursday, the 16-member government was backed by 264 lawmakers, while 15 voted against and 19 had abstained.

The vote came hours after parliament approved Koretsky’s appointment as prime minister and follows the resignation of the previous government earlier this week.

Cabinet positions

Under the new government structure, some ministers kept their positions. This includes:

• Denys Shmyhal as the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy
• Tetyana Berezhna as the Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Policy and Minister of Culture
• Matviy Bidnyy as the Minister of Youth and Sports
• Viktor Lyashko as the Minister of Health
• Serhiy Marchenko as the Minister of Finance
• Denys Uliutin as the Minister of Social Policy, Family, and Unity

However, some individuals received new obligations:

• Vsevolod Chentsov was appointed Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration
• Vitaliy Bezgin was appointed Minister of Communities, Territories, and Internally Displaced Persons
• Andriy Butenko was appointed Minister of Education and Science
• Ivan Vyhivskyi was appointed Minister of the Interior
• Taras Vysotskyi was appointed Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food
• Mykola Kalashnyk was appointed Minister of Recovery, Infrastructure, and Transport
• Vitaliy Kim was appointed Minister of Veterans Affairs
• Oleksandr Kravchenko was appointed Minister of Economy and Environment
• Denys Maslov was appointed Minister of Justice
• Oksana Ferchuk was appointed Minister of Digital Transformation

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Well-known figures within government

Notably, several of the new ministers are well-known figures within Ukraine’s government and regional administrations.

Bezgin, appointed from parliament, previously served as deputy chair of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on State Power Organization, Local Self-Government, Regional Development and Urban Planning.

Kim has been the head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration since November 2020. Previously in 2019, during the presidential and parliamentary elections, he worked in the Mykolaiv regional election headquarters of the Servant of the People party.

Maslov is set to move from his parliamentary seat to the Ministry of Justice. Since 2020, he has been a People’s Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the IX convocation from the Servant of the People party, Chairman of the Legal Policy Committee, and a judge and lawyer.

Vygivsky, head of the National Police of Ukraine, previously the head of the Main Department of the National Police in Kyiv, and a third-rank police general, is now to be the Minister of the Interior.

Government transition

The reshuffle follows the resignation of the government led by Yuliia Svyrydenko, which parliament approved on Tuesday. Her departure automatically triggered the resignation of the entire cabinet under Ukrainian law, allowing for a newly elected cabinet to take its place.

However, the positions of Minister of Defense and Minister of Foreign Affairs were not included in the new cabinet vote. Under national protocol, candidates for those posts are nominated directly by the president and submitted separately to parliament for approval.

No nominations had been submitted by President Volodymyr Zelensky as of press time.