Zelensky shakes up Ukraine government amid signs of battlefield gains

Ukraine’s parliament accepted Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko’s resignation on July 14, dismissing her government and starting a cabinet reshuffle. The vote passed with 258 lawmakers in favor, five abstentions and one vote against, leaving all ministers to serve in an acting capacity until a new cabinet is named.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy set the shake-up in motion two days earlier, saying the government needed a reset and proposing that Svyrydenko move out of the prime minister’s office. He said he had proposed that Yuliia Svyrydenko lead the Government of Ukraine and significantly renew its work, while pressing for closer cooperation with the United States and Europe, along with a sharper focus on the economy, arms production and executive reform.

Active defense operations cut the pace of Russia’s territorial advances by more than half in the first six months of 2026, Oleksandr Syrskyi said on July 10. The Institute for the Study of War assessed that Russia’s spring-summer 2026 offensive had failed to achieve operationally significant gains, with Russian forces seizing or infiltrating 30.42 square kilometers in June, far less than in earlier periods.

She took the post in July 2025 after serving as one of Zelenskyy’s closest economic allies and a leading negotiator on the U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal. Under her government, Ukraine opened its first EU accession negotiation cluster and secured a 90-billion-euro loan package, but an early corruption scandal forced the dismissal of two ministers. Her tenure also exposed tensions inside parliament, where she struggled to build a durable working relationship.

Political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko said the public wants to see “de-Yermakization” continue and that Svyrydenko never built a strong working relationship with parliament. The ruling Servant of the People party holds at least 231 of the 450 seats in the Verkhovna Rada, enough to pass the resignation with room to spare.

Serhii Koretskyi, the chief executive of Naftogaz, is expected to become the next prime minister, while Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko has been named for the defense ministry. The reshuffle also marks the end of Denys Shmyhal’s record run, after he served as Ukraine’s longest-serving prime minister from March 4, 2020, to July 2025.