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The parliament voted for Denys Shmyhal’s resignation. How did he manage to become the longest-serving prime minister?
The Verkhovna Rada has voted to dismiss Denys Shmyhal from the post of Prime Minister, a position he held longer than any of his predecessors. The decision was supported by 261 MPs. According to information released by parliamentarians, no one voted against the dismissal; four MPs abstained, while 55 lawmakers present in the chamber did not participate in the vote.
In his final address to parliament, Shmyhal began by thanking the military and the people for their resilience, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his cooperation, the government for its collective efforts, parliament for its collaboration and “constructive criticism and suggestions,” and businesses for paying taxes.
“These past five years have been the most difficult in our history. … Regardless of how serious the challenges were, we always fulfilled all of our social obligations to the state,” Shmyhal stated, recalling the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic—shortly after he assumed office—and the full-scale war.
Under the Law on the Cabinet of Ministers, the Prime Minister’s resignation automatically triggers the resignation of the entire government. Nevertheless, the Cabinet in resignation continues to carry out its duties until a new government is formed. The new Prime Minister and government lineup are expected to be appointed at the parliamentary session scheduled for July 17.
Denys Shmyhal’s term of more than five years is an unprecedented record in Ukraine’s political history. What allowed him to remain in power for so long?
Firstly, Shmyhal was a uniquely adaptable bureaucrat—a political weathervane. Most importantly, he harbored no presidential ambitions, refrained from advancing his own initiatives and avoided public articulation of independent positions. This meant he posed no media or political threat to Zelenskyy. He quickly grasped that his political survival depended not on performance metrics but on the disposition of a single individual.
Secondly, Shmyhal did not assemble his own Cabinet. The list of ministers was handed down from above. It was Zelenskyy’s government and only his. Shmyhal never truly led the Cabinet—he dutifully executed orders from the Presidential Office, surrendering the reins of government from day one to the president and his circle of “five or six effective managers.” Whether through Cabinet resolutions or staffing decisions, he meticulously implemented instructions—be it the so-called Great Construction (which critics dubbed Great Theft), the “eggs of Reznikov,” the “Defense Procurement Agency of Umerov,” the customs and tax-related schemes, grain export arrangements or the “taxation” of nuclear energy. He followed directives scrupulously, adding or removing names from sanctions or personnel orders, even overriding competitive selection outcomes (as with the ESB and SAPO), regardless of legality. Not once did he deviate from the script over more than five years. Shmyhal functioned as an autopilot, with no authority to chart the course.
Thirdly, Shmyhal rose from a regional bureaucrat to Prime Minister, skipping several critical management tiers and lacking both political experience and parliamentary support, unlike many of his predecessors. He had no political faction to back him in the legislature. While Davyd Arakhamia remained a key ally for years, even this support collapsed once the Servant of the People faction leader fell out of favor with the Presidential Office.
Fourthly, Shmyhal is likely the first Ukrainian Prime Minister to be dismissed not to release public pressure or offload government unpopularity. With all real power concentrated in the president’s hands, both credit and blame have long been associated solely with Zelenskyy. The names of the Prime Minister and most ministers have ceased to attract public interest.
And finally, what distinguishes the outgoing technocratic premier and what deserves recognition and even gratitude?
Let’s be honest: working with subordinates appointed by others—many of them ineffectual and passive—and answering to demanding, often capricious superiors issuing daily instructions from the Presidential Office, who do not understand but disdain and loath the usual bureaucratic system and seek to bypass or dismantle it, all in the midst of an existential war with constant crises and emergencies, is no small feat. Yet the machinery of executive power did not collapse. The country and its public administration somehow endured. Under extremely adverse conditions, Shmyhal managed to maintain a functioning central executive apparatus. This is no minor achievement. He preserved the body of public administration. With blood clots, bedsores, and muscle atrophy, but he preserved it. The great downside is that this organized functioning often ran counter to the interests of the country.
Could Shmyhal have put an end to this? Perhaps—had he made a principled exit or resigned in protest. But in that case, he wouldn’t have been the Shmyhal we know—and he wouldn’t have held the record for the longest premiership in Ukraine’s history.
According to ZN.UA, based on data from the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada, the Cabinet of Ministers submitted 1,071 draft laws during Shmyhal’s tenure, of which only 411 were adopted. This raises a question: in a parliament —and by extension, the government—effectively controlled by the president, why was only a third of the Cabinet’s legislative agenda implemented? Even with the backing of Davyd Arakhamia, the leader of the Servant of the People faction and a key supporter of Shmyhal for years, the efficiency of cooperation between the legislature and the cabinet remained limited.
To explore this, ZN.UA consulted Oleksandr Zaslavskyi, Director of the Analytical Department at the Laboratory of Legislative Initiatives. He emphasized that power consolidation does not directly correlate with systemic efficiency:
“There is a number of constitutional, procedural and institutional mechanisms and constraints rooted in parliamentary and governmental practice that inherently limit efficiency gains. Even if there were only 45 MPs, all sworn to serve the Presidential Office, basic throughput constraints would still apply.Moreover, despite appearances, the Presidential Office cannot micromanage the entire legislative process. Manual control also has its capacity limits. In the vast number of issues that simply cannot be monitored from Presidential Office, what emerges is not controlled governance but a state of complete chaos—though to the outside observer, it may resemble democratic processes. In reality, power within the triangle of governance is decentralized because the capacity of those attempting to control everything is fundamentally mismatched with the complexity and scale of the issues requiring expert solutions,” says Zaslavskyi.
The analyst further noted that since 2019, key executive and parliamentary stakeholders have attempted to move toward a “government-centric” model, in line with the architecture of the parliamentary and public administration reforms.
“They liked the idea, recognized its value and saw its rationale. The presence of a parliamentary majority gave them greater control over the flow of government bills to registration. Parliamentary monitoring data shows that the number of MP-initiated bills gradually declined during the 9th convocation, while the share of adopted government-initiated bills increased.So, although progress was slow, the system was moving in the right direction—addressing the problem of legislative ‘spam’ from MPs without resorting to radical or unpopular measures, such as limiting the individual right of legislative initiative.”
Reference ZN.UA
Denys Shmyhal graduated from Lviv Polytechnic National University. He also studied in Canada, Belgium, Germany, Finland and Georgia. Over the years, he worked as an accountant, financial director and head of the Economic Department of the Lviv Regional State Administration. He also served as deputy head of the regional fiscal service.
Shmyhal was often described in the media as a figure close to oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. From 2017, he worked at the energy-generating company DTEK Zakhidenergo PJSC, and in 2018, became director of the Burshtyn Thermal Power Plant. Shmyhal has claimed that he only saw Akhmetov “on television” during his time at DTEK. However, according to investigative reports—such as those by Bihus.Info—following his appointment as Prime Minister, policies beneficial to DTEK began to be adopted, including his reported support for the RAB tariff mechanism, which favored Akhmetov and other oligarchs owning regional energy utilities.
On August 1, 2019, President Zelenskyy appointed Shmyhal head of the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional State Administration. He later served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Communities and Territorial Development before being appointed Prime Minister.
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