Ukrainian foreign minister resigns ahead of expected reshuffling of government leaders

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, one of Ukraine’s most recognizable faces on the international stage, resigned Wednesday ahead of an expected reshuffling of government leaders. Russian strikes, meanwhile, killed seven people in a western city, a day after one of the deadliest missile attacks since the war began.

Kuleba, 43, gave no reason for stepping down. Four other Cabinet ministers tendered their resignations late Tuesday, likely making this reshuffle the biggest since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy indicated last week that the reshuffling was imminent, with the war poised to enter a critical stage and to mark its 1,000th day in November.

He said Wednesday that Ukraine needs “new energy, and that includes in diplomacy.” He said during a Kyiv news conference with visiting Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris that he could not announce any replacements yet because he did not know whether the candidates would accept his invitation to join the government.

Zelenskyy needs to keep up Ukraine’s morale amid the grinding war of attrition with its bigger neighbor and to 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.

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Wednesday’s deadly attack on Lviv — a city near the border with NATO member Poland and far from the front lines — underscored how all of Ukraine is at the mercy of Moscow’s long-range capabilities.

The Ukrainian army’s risky incursion almost a month ago into Russia’s Kursk border region raised Ukrainian spirits and countered months of grim news from the front line in eastern Ukraine. The incursion’s ultimate goals are unclear, though Zelenskyy says Ukraine wants to create a buffer zone there that would prevent cross-border Russian attacks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin remains bent on pushing his army deeper into eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin’s onslaught in Donetsk, where Ukraine is short of troops and air defenses, and long-range missile strikes that repeatedly hit civilian areas of Ukraine, signal that Putin will remain uncompromising and unrelenting in his efforts to crush Ukrainian resistance.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said late Tuesday that Putin believes Russia “can slowly and indefinitely subsume Ukraine through grinding advances” and “by outlasting Western support” for Kyiv.

Zelenskyy is also keeping in mind the U.S. presidential election in November, which could bring a shift in key U.S. military support for his country.

During the war, Kuleba has been second only to Zelenskyy in carrying Ukraine’s message and needs to an international audience, whether through social media posts or meetings with foreign dignitaries. In July, Kuleba became the highest-ranking Ukrainian official to visit China since Russia’s invasion. He has been foreign minister since March 2020.

Kuleba’s successor is not yet known but is expected to be announced Thursday. Several Ukrainian media outlets, citing unnamed sources, said Kuleba’s deputy, Andrii Sybiha, would become the country’s chief diplomat.

The new foreign minister will likely accompany Zelenskyy next week to the U.N. General Assembly in New York, which is an opportunity to lobby global leaders for their support.

Kuleba’s resignation will be discussed by lawmakers at their next session, parliamentary Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said on his Facebook page.

More than half the current Cabinet will undergo changes, said Davyd Arakhamiia, a leader of Zelenskyy’s party in the parliament. Ministers will resign Wednesday, and new appointments will be made Thursday, he said.

Zelenskyy’s five-year mandate expired in May. He remains in power under the provisions of martial law.

Elsewhere, the nighttime strike on Lviv wounded 52 people as well as killing seven, Ukraine’s rescue service said. The strike was carried out with a Kinzhal missile and drones and targeted defense industry enterprises, Russian news agency Tass said, citing the Russian Defense Ministry.

Local officials disputed the targeting claim. Lviv Mayor Andrii Sadovyi and the Ukrainian Catholic University published a photo of a family whose mother and three daughters were killed in the attack that struck their home. The father survived but was in critical condition, Sadovyi said.

The eldest daughter, 21-year-old Yaryna, was a program manager at the European Youth Forum, a platform of the continent’s youth organizations, her colleagues wrote on Facebook. “We will neither forget nor forgive” the attack, they said in the post.

Another Russian attack wounded five people in Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy’s hometown, regional head Serhii Lysak said.

Kuleba said the Lviv and Kryvyi Rih attacks showed Ukraine’s need for more Western support.

“To put an end to this terror, Ukraine’s partners must promptly deliver the promised air defense systems and ammunition, as well as strengthen Ukraine’s defense capabilities and allow us to launch long-range strikes on all legitimate military targets in Russia,” he wrote on X.

Zelenskyy reacted to the attacks by urging Ukraine’s allies to give Kyiv “more range” to use Western weapons to strike deeper into Russian territory.

The attack happened a day after two ballistic missiles blasted a military academy and nearby hospital in Poltava in eastern-central Ukraine, killing 53 people and wounding almost 300 others, Ukrainian officials said.

The missiles tore into the heart of the Poltava Military Institute of Communication’s main building, causing several stories to collapse.

Poltava is about 350 kilometers (200 miles) southeast 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.

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 Wednesday saying that since 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.

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Burrows reported from London.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine