Two key ministries of the warring country — defense and foreign affairs — have existed for weeks without official heads. People's Deputy Alexei Goncharenko drew attention to an unfortunate detail:
At the moment, Zelensky has not submitted to the Rada nominations for the position of defense minister and foreign affairs minister. I remind you that the Rada's plenary week begins the day after tomorrow
Formally, this is a technical delay. In essence, it is a continuation of the status quo that the president chooses consciously.
How it came to this vacuum
On July 15, Zelensky announced the dismissal of Mykhailo Fedorov from the position of defense minister, appointing former acting SBU chief Yevhenii Khmara in his place. The decision provoked protests in several cities — people demanded not only to return Fedorov but also to replace the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. Following this, Oleksandr Syrskyi announced his own resignation as Commander-in-Chief, noting that he was handing over to his successor an army that "not only holds defense but is in a state of offense."
Then the president removed Khmara — dismissing him from the position of acting SBU chief and head of the Center for Special Operations "A". In other words, over the course of several weeks, the country went through three personnel upheavals in the defense sector — and none of them was completed with an official appointment approved by the Rada.
Who benefits from the lack of submission
As long as the position remains "temporary" — headed by an acting official — it does not require a vote in the Verkhovna Rada. This removes from the president the need to publicly defend the candidate before the chamber, where the opposition has the right to ask uncomfortable questions and vote against. An acting official can be changed by decree in a single day, without debate and without the risk that the Rada will reject the nomination or turn the voting into a political scandal.
This is particularly convenient against the backdrop of recent personnel decisions in the defense sphere that have already provoked protests and public criticism. A formal appointment of a new minister would mean a new round of questions — about the reasons for Fedorov's dismissal, about the circumstances of Syrskyi's resignation, about why Khmara lasted only a few days in the position. The absence of a submission allows these topics to be kept out of the parliamentary chamber.
Response from opponents
Goncharenko is not the first to publicly document the president's personnel policy as a way to avoid strong, independent figures in key positions. According to his assessment, the president consistently leads a team of people whom the public hardly knows — and precisely because too well-known officials become politically dangerous to him. A telling detail: when the situation in the defense sector became too loud, someone in the power vertical immediately lost their position.
For the opposition, the absence of a submission is another argument about manual management of personnel in circumvention of the established procedure. For Bankova — a way to buy time and avoid a vote whose outcome is unpredictable.
What's next
The plenary week begins the day after tomorrow. If the submission does not appear this time either, the question about the heads of the Defense Ministry and Foreign Affairs Ministry will become one of the topics that the opposition will raise publicly in the chamber.
The main question is simple: is the president ready to entrust these positions to a person whom the Rada will be able not only to appoint but also to publicly question — or will management through "acting officials" become standard practice in wartime?
