What did Ukraine's government reshuffle of March 2020 mean?
A look back at the days when the Verkhovna Rada removed one cabinet after under six months and began forming another.
What did it mean when Ukraine's parliament dismissed a government barely half a year after it took office? On 6 March 2020, the question was still fresh. Two days earlier, on 4 March 2020, the Verkhovna Rada accepted the resignation of the government of Oleksiy Honcharuk and began forming the government of Denys Shmygal.
A short-lived cabinet
Honcharuk and his ministers were voted out after less than six months in office. The brevity of the tenure was the defining feature of the change: a cabinet appointed in the autumn of 2019 was gone before the end of winter.
The president's choice
President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed Shmygal as Prime Minister. The Rada then began the process of forming the new cabinet. The sequence placed the initiative with the president, with parliament carrying out the vote and the formation of the new government.
What the change implied
The immediate consequence was plain: Ukraine entered March 2020 with an outgoing prime minister, a nominee in his place and a cabinet still to be assembled. Beyond that, any judgement about policy direction or reform pace would have been speculation on 6 March 2020.
A separate matter still open
The domestic reshuffle unfolded alongside an international issue. 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. That aircraft was Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, a Boeing 737-800 flying from Tehran to Kyiv. It was shot down on 8 January 2020 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 people on board.
So as of 6 March 2020, Kyiv was changing its government while the question of the flight recorders remained unresolved.
