Overview
- President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Friday that Taras Kachka will leave the deputy prime minister post to become head of Ukraine’s Mission to the European Union in Brussels and serve as Ukraine’s trade representative.
- Vsevolod Chentsov will return from Brussels to Kyiv to take Kachka’s former role as deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration in a direct role-swap ordered by the president.
- Zelensky framed the switch as a tactical step to push for decisions on four still-unopened EU negotiating clusters and to rework Kyiv’s bilateral trade pacts to match EU external-relations rules.
- Progress on Kyiv’s rule-of-law and anti-corruption benchmarks remains limited, with EU officials saying roughly 15% of the December 2025 Kachka–Kos reform agenda had been implemented by June, which could slow future cluster openings.
- The appointments are part of a wider wartime cabinet reshuffle that included the firing of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov and triggered protests, a political dynamic that could affect domestic support for the reform push and Ukraine’s negotiating leverage.