Who would lead Ukraine's parliament after Razumkov's dismissal?
A look back at the days around 11 October 2021, after the Verkhovna Rada replaced its speaker and a new chair took over.
What did Ukraine's parliament look like on 11 October 2021, the first working Monday after it changed its leadership? The Verkhovna Rada, which sits in Kyiv and had been in its ninth convocation since 29 August 2019, had just replaced its speaker within the space of two days.
On 7 October 2021, the Verkhovna Rada voted to remove Dmytro Razumkov from the post of speaker. As reported at the time, the dismissal followed his disagreements with President Volodymyr Zelensky and with the stance of the ruling Servant of the People party on legislation aimed at reducing the influence of Ukrainian oligarchs.
The chamber did not leave the post vacant for long. On 8 October 2021, deputies elected Ruslan Stefanchuk as the new head of parliament. The two votes, on consecutive days, closed one chapter in the work of the ninth convocation and opened another.
A change at the top
The sequence matters because the speaker chairs the legislature and sets the tone for how it handles contested bills. The dispute that preceded the dismissal concerned precisely that kind of bill: legislation on oligarchs, an area where the presidential party and its former speaker had parted ways. By 11 October 2021, that disagreement had been settled in the party's favour, at least as far as the chair was concerned.
A parallel signal abroad
Elsewhere, security politics around Ukraine's neighbourhood was also moving. On 6 October 2021, NATO expelled eight members of the Russian Mission to NATO, accusing them of secretly operating as intelligence officers, and reduced the number of Russian positions at the organisation to 10. The step was separate from the change in Kyiv, but it formed part of the news picture in the same week.
Looking back, 11 October 2021 sits just after a rapid turnover in parliament's leadership: a dismissal on 7 October, a new speaker on 8 October, and a legislature set to continue its work under different management.
