Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba has resigned, following an announcement last week from President Volodymyr Zelensky that a cabinet reshuffle was imminent.
Mr Kuleba’s resignation request will be discussed by lawmakers at the next plenary meeting, the speaker of parliament Ruslan Stefanchuk said on his Facebook page.
The foreign minister’s resignation came as at least seven people were killed and 35 injured in an overnight strike on Lviv, city mayor Andrii Sadovyi said on Wednesday morning.
A child and a medical worker were among the dead and others are in a critical condition, he said.
During today's meeting in Brussels with EU foreign ministers, I conveyed a sense of urgency regarding the delivery of already pledged military aid, including air defense systems. I appreciate the readiness of my colleagues to take necessary steps to expedite these deliveries.… pic.twitter.com/wvVIT4wqTc
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) August 29, 2024
The attack happened a day after two ballistic missiles blasted a military academy and nearby hospital in Poltava in Ukraine, killing more than 50 people and wounding more than 200 others, Ukrainian officials said, in one of the deadliest Russian strikes since the war began.
The missiles tore into the heart of the Poltava Military Institute of Communication’s main building, causing several storeys to collapse.
The missiles hit shortly after an air raid alert sounded, when many people were on their way to a bomb shelter, Ukraine’s defence ministry said, describing the strike Tuesday as “barbaric”.
Poltava is about 200 miles south-east of Kyiv, on the main highway and rail route between Kyiv and Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which is close to the Russian border.
The attack happened as Ukrainian forces sought to carve out their holdings in Russia’s Kursk border region after a surprise Ukrainian incursion that began on August 6, and as the Russian army hacks its way deeper into eastern Ukraine.
Mr Kuleba, 43, did not give a reason for stepping down.
Four other Cabinet ministers tendered their resignations late Tuesday, making the Cabinet reshuffle likely the biggest since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
Mr Zelensky indicated last week that a reshuffle was imminent, with the war poised to enter a critical stage and as its 1,000-day mark looms in November.
The Ukrainian President needs to maintain Ukraine’s morale amid the grinding war of attrition with its bigger neighbour and steel the country’s resolve for what will be another hard winter.
Russia has been smashing Ukraine’s power grid, knocking out some 70% of generation capacity and rupturing heat and water supplies.
The Ukrainian army’s risky but largely successful incursion almost a month ago into Russia’s Kursk border region countered months of grim news from the front line in eastern Ukraine.
Kursk is not a priority, however, for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who remains bent on pushing his army deeper into eastern Ukraine.
Russia’s onslaught in Donetsk, where Ukraine is short of troops and air defences, and long-range missile strikes that repeatedly hit civilian areas of Ukraine signal that Mr Putin will remain uncompromising and unrelenting in his efforts to crush Ukrainian resistance.
In other developments, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency, Rafael Grossi, visited the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine, a day after describing the situation at Europe’s largest atomic energy facility as “very fragile”.
The International Atomic Energy Agency published a report on Wednesday saying that since Mr Grossi’s last visit there in February, the plant has been struck by drones, lost power lines and seen “significant damage” to one of its two cooling towers by fire.
