Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tendered his resignation on Wednesday ahead of an expected major cabinet reshuffle as a fresh wave of Russian missiles overnight killed at least seven people, including a child.
Kuleba is the latest high-profile member of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s cabinet to resign as Russia’s invasion grinds on, and his decision comes ahead of an expected visit by the president to the US this month.
As Ukraine’s top diplomat, Kuleba has been a prominent fixture in Zelensky’s administration and one of the most public-facing, especially dealing with overseas officials.
Ukraine’s parliament will consider the foreign minister’s resignation at one of its plenary meetings soon, Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said on Telegram.
Davyd Arakhamia, the majority leader of Ukraine’s parliament, said Tuesday that there would be major changes expected in the cabinet this week.
“As promised, a major government reset can be expected this week. More than 50% of the Cabinet of Ministers’ staff will be changed,” Arakhamia said on Telegram, adding that new members would be appointed imminently.
Among those who have resigned was the Minister for Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin, who was in charge of weapons production. He is expected to assume another defense role, Reuters reported.
The resignations also include the justice, environment and reintegration ministers.
In his nightly address Tuesday, Zelensky said the coming fall will be “extremely important for Ukraine” and as such “our state institutions must be set up so that Ukraine achieves all the results we need.”
“To do this, we need to strengthen some areas of the government… I am also counting on a slightly different weight for certain areas of our foreign and domestic policy,” he said.
Speaking to CNN Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour Tuesday, Kuleba said he expects Putin to continue increasing air attacks on Ukraine before winter sets in.
“Putin still has the same purpose to freeze people, to destroy our economy and this is his strategy. So I’m afraid he will continue with his barrage of missile and drone attacks over the course of the autumn,” he said.
The attacks, Kuleba said, are “just another reason why delivery of air defense systems to Ukraine must be expedited.”
Missiles hit Lviv
The expected reshuffle came as Russian missiles continued to rain down on Ukrainian cities.
Lviv’s mayor Andriy Sadovyi confirmed the seven deaths and said residential buildings were damaged in the attack.
Earlier, the head of the city’s regional military administration Maksym Kozytskyi said among the dead was a 14-year-old girl and that at least 25 people were injured in the attack. A 15-month-old child suffered “moderate” injuries and four other children have minor injuries, he said.
Also damaged in the attack were at least seven “architectural monuments of local importance,” including houses located in a historic part of the city and inside a UNESCO buffer zone, according to Kozytskyi.
Lviv, in Ukraine’s far west, is generally considered one of the safer places in the country and many people from eastern regions relocated there to seek safety.
Ukraine’s Air Force said Wednesday it shot down 22 attack drones and seven cruise missiles.
The day before, a Russian strike against a military educational facility in central Ukraine killed 53 people and injured more than 270 others, according to the state emergency service of Ukraine, in one of the deadliest single attacks since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“Ordinary residential buildings in the city, schools, and medical facilities were damaged,” Zelensky said of the Lviv attack in a Telegram post Wednesday.
Five people were also injured in Russian attacks in the central city of Kryvyi Rih after a hotel building was destroyed, according to the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration Serhiy Lysak. It came just over a week after Russia launched a massive drone and missile attack aimed at energy infrastructure across the country, in which two were killed in an attack on a hotel in Kryvyi Rih.
“Each of our partners in the world who help Ukraine with air defense is a real defender of life,” Zelenksy said, appealing for more support for its air defenses. “And anyone who convinces partners to give Ukraine more range in order to respond to terror justly is working to prevent such Russian terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities. Terror must be stopped.”
