What happened in Kyiv after the Honcharuk government fell?
A look back at the political changes in Ukraine in the days before 10 March 2020, when a new cabinet was taking shape.
What was the state of Ukraine's government on 10 March 2020? By then, the country was already in the middle of a change of cabinet that had begun six days earlier.
On 4 March 2020, the Verkhovna Rada accepted the resignation of the government of Oleksiy Honcharuk. The cabinet had been in office for less than six months. The same day, parliament began the process of forming a government under Denys Shmygal, whom President Volodymyr Zelensky had proposed as Prime Minister.
The change of government was not the only Ukraine-related story of that week. 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. According to later background, it was shot down on 8 January 2020 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shortly after takeoff, and all 176 people on board were killed.
So as 10 March 2020 arrived, Ukraine's domestic politics were defined by the transition from one cabinet to the next, while the international effort to obtain the flight recorders from Iran continued.
