Government Out: What do Repeated Personnel Reshuffles Cost Ukraine?

Five days remained until the first anniversary of Yuliia Svyrydenko’s Government. Instead of a public assessment of its performance, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced a change in political strategy and a Government reshuffle. The following day, the Prime Minister submitted her resignation to the Verkhovna Rada, and Parliament accepted it. This automatically entailed the resignation of the entire Cabinet.

The public was never told why these changes were being made. It could only speculate as to whether the Government had fulfilled its tasks, what criteria had been used to assess it and whether state priorities were changing or the authorities were simply trying to salvage their reputation and approval ratings.

The news also came as a surprise to those required to give the decisions legal effect: MPs. They said they had learnt of the Government reshuffle from the President’s social media posts and the media.

The episode once again exposed not only poor communication between branches of government, but also the gap between Parliament’s role under the law and actual practice, in which political initiative is centred on the President.

Following procedure and making decisions transparent allow society to understand who decided what, how and why and who will be held responsible. The way personnel changes, including Government reshuffles, are conducted affects not only trust in new appointees, but also the state’s ability to continue working effectively through changes in personnel. This article considers what these processes reveal and what consequences they may have for the state.

The President of Ukraine cannot appoint or dismiss the Cabinet of Ministers single-handedly. The Verkhovna Rada appoints the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defence and the Minister for Foreign Affairs on the President’s submission. It appoints the other members of the Government on the Prime Minister’s submission.

The Government is responsible to both the President and Parliament, but it is controlled by and accountable specifically to the Verkhovna Rada. Parliament should assess the Government throughout its term, not only on the day it resigns. MPs should monitor the fulfilment of commitments, hear reports from ministers, analyse decisions and demand explanations. Ultimately, they should determine whether the executive is performing its tasks.

With proper parliamentary oversight, the Cabinet’s performance would not be assessed within a closed circle of political leaders. MPs themselves would conduct that assessment.

This is difficult, however, in a system where the President is perceived as the main centre of decision-making by both Government officials and, often, MPs themselves. In such a configuration, accountability becomes an open question: why report to Parliament if it does not, in practice, determine whether a minister remains in office? Parliamentary oversight instruments exist, but in practice they do not ensure that the Government is accountable to the Verkhovna Rada.

Society is consequently given a political verdict without a public analysis of the Cabinet’s performance, clear conclusions or an explanation of what the new Government is expected to change.

The problem is not only that MPs do not assess the Government systematically. They may also be excluded from shaping personnel decisions that they will later be expected to approve with their votes.

By law, the Government is formed with the participation of the President, the Verkhovna Rada and the candidate for the post of Prime Minister. Informal negotiations are a normal part of a democratic process. The problem arises when they entirely replace a substantive and open procedure and Parliament becomes merely the technical implementer of a decision taken elsewhere.

It remains unclear whether parliamentary committees were consulted before the reshuffle was announced or who prepared the list of candidates. Another unanswered question is whether the President, the future Prime Minister and the parliamentary majority divided among themselves the right to nominate candidates and, if so, how.

Judging by public and private reactions, MPs received no explanation for the Government reshuffle. This leaves them hostage to the situation and subsequently accountable to society for personnel changes over which they had little or no influence. Their votes, after all, turn the President’s initiative into a formal appointment.

Supporting the personnel changes proposed by the President will amount to an informal vote of confidence in the presidential strategy. Responsibility for that vote, however, cannot be transferred entirely to the President and his team.

Symbolically, Svyrydenko’s resignation coincided with the end of her first year in office, equivalent to the one-year protection from dismissal that the Government would have received had its Programme been approved. Even if the authorities had sought to justify the resignation by reference to the Svyrydenko Government’s performance, another problem would have arisen: on the basis of which documents could its performance be assessed?

This Cabinet submitted its Programme of Activities to the Verkhovna Rada in September 2025, but Parliament never approved it. There are therefore no objectives endorsed by Parliament against which the Government’s effectiveness can be measured.

It is, of course, possible to analyse priority action plans, the State Budget, implementation of international commitments, draft laws prepared and public promises. Such an assessment would, however, be based largely on public commitments that are not binding and do not assign responsibility.

Without an approved Programme, the Government’s resignation does not complete a proper cycle of accountability. The Government simply changes. Society is not shown the shortcomings that need to be addressed. These are lost amid speculation and rumours.

The new Cabinet’s first priority should therefore be to prepare a comprehensive Programme of Activities with measurable objectives, deadlines and responsible authorities. It should be presented publicly and submitted to the Verkhovna Rada on time. Approval of the Programme would give the new Government one-year immunity from dismissal and would allow MPs and society to understand exactly what the Cabinet is responsible for and how its performance will be assessed.

The imbalance between influence and responsibility is only one aspect of a personnel reset. The other is its cost to the public administration system.

Personnel changes in Ukraine are regularly accompanied by changes to the architecture of the executive itself. Ministries are merged, divided or renamed and their functions transferred from one authority to another.

Such a decision can be announced in a day, but its implementation takes months — usually around six. The ministry continues to operate during this period, but a substantial share of its resources is diverted to restoring and stabilising processes.

The Ministry of National Unity is a good example of poor management practice: a ministry that lasted only six months. At a time when Ukraine’s resources are limited, substantial resources were spent on an experiment that delivered no results.

Reorganisation requires a new regulation governing the ministry and the redistribution of functions, areas of responsibility, staff, budgets and other matters. Some decisions must be agreed again with other authorities.

Part of the new Government’s first year may therefore once again be spent on internal restructuring rather than policy implementation. Even a competent team cannot instantly recover lost time, restore disrupted working relationships or rebuild processes. The more complex another restructuring becomes, the more important a proper handover from the outgoing Government to its successor will be.

The quality of that handover will determine whether the new Cabinet can continue work already under way or must again spend months reconstructing the context, reviewing decisions already prepared and building its own teams. The true legacy of a Government is therefore not only a list of successes and failures or the Prime Minister’s final social media post, but a clear account of the state in which key policy areas are handed over to the new leadership.

Handover books for the new Prime Minister and each minister could be one tool for this transfer. They should record the current state of affairs, critical deadlines for meeting commitments, draft laws and secondary legislation in progress, potential risks and other relevant matters. They should separately identify processes that must not be interrupted by a change of leadership and decisions that cannot be postponed.

Ukraine has already attempted to introduce this practice, but it unfortunately failed to take root. As a good governance tool, it helps ensure that institutional memory is not lost when leadership changes. It would also allow Parliament to determine which measures proposed by the new Cabinet are genuinely new and which continue work begun by its predecessors.

A change of Government will force some Government draft laws to begin their parliamentary journey again. This concerns all 142 draft laws introduced by the Svyrydenko Cabinet that had not been adopted as a basis at first reading, according to calculations based on open data. For Parliament, this effectively means a new cycle of committee consideration, opinions and another first reading.

The previous work does not disappear entirely, but repeating the procedure will take time. This may slow processes on which the fulfilment of EU integration commitments and Ukraine’s access to international financial support often depend. During a reshuffle, the state must therefore preserve its ability to perform hundreds of interconnected daily tasks without repeatedly returning to the starting point.

Personnel changes are sometimes necessary. It is reasonable to revise the structure of the executive if it is not delivering results. Every such decision, however, has a price: time, resources, lost momentum in meeting international commitments, the need to rebuild processes and the risk of new crises.

Ukraine has very few of these resources during wartime. Political decisions should therefore be assessed not only in terms of political expediency or the desire to satisfy personal political ambitions, but also in terms of whether they can realistically be implemented.

Even the best objective does not release the authorities from their duty to explain the reasons for personnel decisions, what state policy will look like following changes in personnel and what will ensure its continuity. Nor does it remove the obligation to follow the procedure established by law. The issue concerns not only the stability of state institutions, but also public trust and the country’s ability to move forward without another return to the starting point.

Ukraine is already at that starting point, forming a new Government. This time, it should at least try to do things properly: adopt a Programme of Activities and avoid another radical reshuffling of ministries. The new Cabinet may then avoid the fate of its predecessor.