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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to Donald Trump that he would replace Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington alongside the country’s biggest wartime cabinet reshuffle expected next week, according to officials familiar with the plans.
The two leaders discussed replacing ambassador Oksana Markarova by phone on Friday, and agreed that their teams would hold further consultations about potential candidates for each side to vet, two officials briefed on the conversation told the Financial Times.
Markarova had been criticised by many of Trump’s allies in congress as being too close to Democrats. Her removal will be seen as Zelenskyy trying to appease Trump at a sensitive time for Ukraine, after the administration paused deliveries of some key weapons last week.
Zelenskyy is looking to appoint a “good dealmaker’’ as ambassador who is ‘‘understandable to the White House and at the same time to the Congress”, according to a senior Ukrainian official involved in the process.
The Ukrainian leader will probably restructure his cabinet again next week, three officials close to the president said. He has reshuffled his cabinet multiple times since the war began, and the latest changes reflect growing frustration with his current government.
Balazs Jarabik, a former EU diplomat in Kyiv, said the personnel changes were a familiar response to mounting political, economic and social pressures.
“Rather than indicating a shift in strategic direction, the reshuffle appears aimed at containing discontent, projecting a sense of renewal and maintaining control amid growing pressure on multiple fronts,” he said.
The White House and Ukraine’s presidential administration did not respond to a request for comment. Markarova could not immediately be reached for comment.
Bloomberg earlier reported part of the conversation with Trump about Markarova.
House Speaker Mike Johnson called for Markarova’s dismissal after she organised a visit by Zelenskyy with Democrat politicians to an arms facility in the swing state of Pennsylvania during the 2024 US election campaign, a move many Republicans saw as politically tone deaf. Though replacements were considered late last year, she stayed on during the transitional months of Trump’s second term.
She has been at the centre of Ukraine’s diplomatic efforts in Washington since 2021 and helped steer relations through the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion, building ties with the Biden administration.
The government reshuffle would be the second since September, when Zelenskyy said “new energy” was needed to take the country forward, and dismissed long-serving foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, according to two officials with knowledge of the matter. That move raised alarms in western capitals, where Kuleba was highly respected and seen as a reliable interlocutor.
Four Ukrainian officials said Zelenskyy’s powerful chief of staff Andriy Yermak was orchestrating the current shake-up, with two of them saying that he was seeking to consolidate more control over the government. Kuleba was replaced in the last reshuffle by experienced diplomat and Yermak ally Andriy Sybiha.
Among those being considered to replace Markarova as Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington are Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, deputy prime minister for European integration Olha Stefanishyna, defence minister Rustem Umerov, energy minister German Galushchenko, culture minister Mykola Tochytskyi and deputy head of the president’s office Ihor Zhovkva, according to four officials involved in the discussions. Those officials said there could also be others considered.
Shmyhal, a technocrat who has survived several government upheavals and is viewed as one of the few independently minded persons remaining in government, will probably be replaced as prime minister by Yulia Svyrydenko, three of the Ukrainian officials said.
Svyrydenko, the first deputy prime minister, is a close ally of Yermak and is seen as having built a good rapport with Trump’s team after leading negotiations on the minerals deal agreed between Kyiv and Washington with US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent.
“Andriy wants someone who is 100 per cent his person. So he is promoting his protégé, his pupil, someone fully loyal to and understood by him — Yulia Svyrydenko,” said Mariana Bezuhla, a Ukrainian lawmaker and member of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
Ukraine was due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections last year but delayed them due to the war.
Oleksandr Merezhko, an MP from Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party and head of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said reshuffling the government periodically made sense because holding elections during martial law was “impossible”.
“Not all ministers live up to the requirements and expectations during war,” Merezhko said.
