(Bloomberg) — Ukrainian lawmakers have voted to fire the country’s powerful infrastructure minister as President Volodymyr Zelensky seeks to regain control of key areas of government.
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The removal of Oleksandr Kubrakov, who also served as deputy prime minister in charge of reconstruction during the war, was supported by lawmakers on Thursday. The ruling parliamentary majority had decided to split the current Ministry of Municipalities, Territories and Infrastructure Development – which was set up just two years ago – into separate departments, one focused exclusively on infrastructure and the other on regional development.
Although neither Zelensky nor his office have directly attacked Kubrakov publicly, the motion for his removal was made by 40 MPs. All but three were members of the president’s Servant of the People party, which has a majority in the 401-member legislature.
“A cooling of relations with Kubrakov and an increasingly critical attitude of the president towards Kubrakov were at work here,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta Research Institute in Kiev. “That is probably the main motive for this personnel decision.”
Before the vote, Kubrakov said Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal had not discussed the decision with him. “I was also not invited to the parliamentary committee meeting,” he wrote in a Facebook post.
As a young technocrat who entered the government three years ago, Kubrakov’s mandate expanded after the invasion of Russia to include infrastructure repair and current and future postwar reconstruction efforts. He may return to head a new infrastructure ministry, the Hromadske website reported, citing unidentified MPs from Zelensky’s party.
After the war began, Kubrakov became one of the officials who signed the United Nations Grain Treaty. He was co-chair of the Multi-Agency Donor Coordination Panel set up by the Group of Seven to organize international financing for Ukraine’s reconstruction, but was replaced late last year.
His removal comes as Russian missile and drone attacks continue to damage the country’s power grid, raising questions about the effectiveness of efforts to protect vital infrastructure.
Parliament also voted on Thursday to fire Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyi, who became the target of a bribery investigation related to a state land grab in the eastern Sumy region. He was released from custody last month after posting $1.9 million bail.
– With support from Olesia Safronova.
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