Why did Ukraine's parliament change its speaker in October 2021?

What did the change of speaker in the Verkhovna Rada mean for Ukrainian politics? On 11 October 2021, the question was still fresh, only days after parliament had removed one speaker and chosen another.

On 7 October 2021, the Verkhovna Rada voted to dismiss Dmytro Razumkov as head of parliament. As reported at the time, the dismissal followed his disagreements with President Volodymyr Zelensky and the ruling Servant of the People party over their stances on legislation aimed at reducing the influence of Ukrainian oligarchs. On 8 October 2021, the chamber elected Ruslan Stefanchuk as its new speaker.

Context

The chamber involved was the 9th convocation of the Verkhovna Rada, which began its term on 29 August 2019 and meets in Kyiv. The speaker's post was therefore changed partway through that convocation's term, and the change took place over two consecutive days.

What the sequence shows

The reported cause of the dismissal was a dispute over policy. The disagreements concerned legislation on oligarch influence, and the party and president on one side and the speaker on the other were at odds over it. Within a day of the dismissal, parliament had a successor in place, so the leadership of the chamber was not left vacant.

What the new speaker would do with the oligarch legislation was not set out in the reports from those days, and any judgement on that would be speculation. The fixed points were the vote on 7 October 2021, the election on 8 October 2021 and the dispute behind them.

A parallel track

In the same week, on 6 October 2021, NATO expelled eight members of the Russian Mission to NATO, accusing them of secretly operating as intelligence officers. It also reduced the number of Russian positions at the organisation to 10. The reports on this are separate from the Ukrainian parliamentary story, and none of them links the two events.