Volodymyr Zelenskyy has nominated Yulia Svyrydenko to become Ukraine’s new prime minister while moving the long-serving incumbent, Denys Shmyhal, to defence minister. It increases the likelihood that Rustem Umerov – current defence minister – will become the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington. Ukraine’s president said he wanted Svyrydenko, 39, an economist, to lead the government and “significantly renew its work”; while Shmyhal’s “vast experience” would be “valuable in the position of minister of defence of Ukraine. This is precisely the area where the country’s maximum resources, maximum tasks and a great deal of responsibility are currently concentrated.”
Svyrydenko posted that she would pursue deregulation, cut back bureaucracy, protect business and reduce non-critical expenditure to achieve the “full concentration of state resources” for defence and post-war recovery. “The state apparatus has no right to waste the resources and potential of our country,” she said. “Ukraine deserves to be among the strongest economies in Europe.” The nominations require parliamentary approval.
It comes as Donald Trump confirms he will authorise billions of dollars’ worth of US military supplies to Ukraine including defensive Patriot missiles and the launcher systems, known as batteries, that fire them. The US president and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, met and announced Ukraine’s European allies would pay for the equipment, with some drawn immediately from their existing stockpiles and then replaced.
Trump had promised a major announcement on Russia on Monday, but apart from the weapons announcement he gave Vladimir Putin another 50 days to make a peace deal. After that, “we’re going to be doing very severe tariffs”, the president said, referring to “secondary tariffs” that would target Russia’s remaining trade partners. The US senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal praised Trump’s “powerful” move. However, they have a sanctions bill ready to go through the US Congress in short order, whereas Trump’s announcement represents a further prevarication on taking tough action against Putin and his trade partners, among whom the senators singled out “China, India and Brazil, that prop up Putin’s war machine”.
A retired US army officer who worked as a civilian for the air force has pleaded guilty to conspiring to transmit classified information about Russia’s war with Ukraine on a foreign online dating platform. David Slater, 64, who had top secret clearance, pleaded guilty to a single count in exchange for two other counts being dropped. He is due to be sentenced on 8 October with prosecutors and his lawyers agreeing he should serve between five years and 10 months and seven years and three months in prison, with the government recommending the low end of that range.
Russian drones killed two people on Monday in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region. The governor, Oleksander Prokudin, said a woman was killed in the region’s main town, also known as Kherson, and a man died in an area north of the city along the Dnipro River.
