COMMENT: Zelenskiy’s latest reshuffle reinforces presidential power, not government reform
Ukraine’s new prime minister, Yuliia Svyrydenko, is the first to hold the post in five years – but her appointment is unlikely to signal a major shift in Kyiv’s governance. As Ukraine’s system of power has evolved under the pressure of war, the position of prime minister has become largely symbolic. In today’s political structure, only the president and his chief of staff wield real authority.
Denys Shmyhal’s unusually long tenure – five years and 133 days – was less a reflection of political strength than of technocratic loyalty. He outlasted several reshuffles not because of personal ambition, but precisely because he lacked it. Unlike his predecessors, who often clashed with presidents in the past – such as Leonid Kuchma with Leonid Kravchuk or Yulia Tymoshenko with Viktor Yushchenko – Shmyhal posed no threat to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s centralised leadership.
Zelenskiy, uninterested in power-sharing arrangements, abandoned the idea of a politically competitive cabinet early in his presidency. After experimenting with a reformist government under Oleksiy Honcharuk, whose policy lectures reportedly irritated the president, he pivoted to appointing loyal technocrats who would implement directives without deviation.
This model held until Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Since then, martial law has frozen Ukraine’s political processes: no elections, no government transitions, no parliamentary resets. “Certainly, no one inside the government was in any particular rush to test the public’s love for them at the polling stations,” said independent journalist Konstantin Skorkin in a note for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But discontent and a desire for change were accumulating in Ukrainian society and needed a release valve.”
Instead of elections or genuine power-sharing, Zelenskiy’s team opted for a controlled reboot. Svyrydenko has replaced Shmyhal, who remains in government as defence minister. Rustem Umerov, whom Shmyhal replaces, will be sent to Washington as ambassador. “All that remains to complete the circle is to return Umerov’s predecessor Oksana Markarova from Washington to the government,” Skorkin noted.
According to Skorkin, the reshuffle serves to consolidate control under Andriy Yermak, the powerful head of the presidential administration. “No matter how loyal Shmyhal was, he was not Yermak’s creature, and therefore had to be replaced,” he said. Previous attempts to remove Shmyhal were blocked by Servant of the People party leader David Arakhamia, who represented a rare alternative voice within the administration.
Svyrydenko, in contrast, is portrayed as even more compliant. “She diligently writes down all the president’s instructions in a notebook, and makes her government jet available to the first lady,” Skorkin said, citing Ukrainska Pravda. Still, her career is not without merit: she rose from regional official to economy minister, attracting Chinese investment to Chernihiv and earning international recognition from Time magazine.
She is now only the second woman to serve as prime minister in Ukraine, following in the path of Yulia Tymoshenko, once dismissed as a political proxy yet still a force in parliament. Whether Svyrydenko can similarly evolve into an independent political actor remains to be seen.
“It has often been said that Zelenskiy believes more in individuals than in institutions,” Skorkin observed. “But in the established power system, the prime minister’s name does not matter – not because of institutions that work like clockwork, but because all branches of power except the presidential vertical have dried up.”
With martial law continuing and no end to the war in sight, the possibility of restoring institutional balance looks increasingly remote. “Even thinking about such a time is beginning to seem utopian,” Skorkin concluded.
