Kyiv's government reshuffle: the days before 10 March 2020
A look back at how Ukraine's cabinet changed hands in early March 2020, and what was known by the eve of 10 March.
What had Kyiv's political landscape looked like by 10 March 2020? The country had just changed its government, and the events of the days before that date set the scene.
On 4 March 2020, the Verkhovna Rada accepted the resignation of the government led by Oleksiy Honcharuk, which had been in office for less than six months. The vote ended that cabinet's tenure. On the same day, President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed Denys Shmygal as Prime Minister, and parliament began forming a government under him.
The transition meant that by 10 March 2020 Ukraine was in the middle of assembling a new executive, with the proposed head of government already named and the parliamentary process under way.
An international file in the background
Also on 4 March 2020, Canadian Foreign Minister François-Philippe Champagne urged Iran to allow access to the flight recorders of the Ukrainian passenger plane shot down in January. The aircraft was Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, a Boeing 737-800 flying from Tehran to Kyiv. It was shot down shortly after takeoff on 8 January 2020 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and all 176 people on board were killed.
The call over the flight recorders showed that the downing of the airliner remained an open diplomatic matter even as Ukraine's domestic politics shifted.
