Why Dmytro Razumkov lost the speakership of Ukraine's parliament
A retrospective on the Verkhovna Rada vote that removed its speaker amid disputes over legislation targeting oligarchs.
What happened in Kyiv on 7 October 2021, when the Verkhovna Rada voted to remove Dmytro Razumkov as speaker of the parliament?
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a decision dismissing Razumkov from the post of head of parliament. The removal followed his disagreements with President Volodymyr Zelensky and with the stance of the ruling Servant of the People party on legislation intended to reduce the influence of Ukrainian oligarchs.
The vote came in the 9th convocation of the Verkhovna Rada, which began its term on 29 August 2019 and meets in the parliament building in Kyiv. Razumkov had presided over it as speaker, and his dismissal ended that tenure in the middle of the convocation's term.
A separate story abroad
The previous day, 6 October 2021, NATO expelled eight members of the Russian Mission to NATO, accusing them of secretly operating as intelligence officers. The alliance also reduced the number of Russian positions at the organisation to 10. That decision was taken in Brussels and was separate from the vote in the Ukrainian parliament, but it formed part of the news picture in the same days.
For Ukraine's domestic politics, the significance of 7 October lay in the dismissal itself: the speaker, a figure of the governing majority's own making, was removed after publicly differing with the president's camp over how far and in what way to curb oligarchic influence.
