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Yulia Svyrydenko stepped down on Sunday as Ukraine’s prime minister amid predictions she would become Kyiv’s ambassador to the US. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said there would also be changes in the top ranks of law enforcement agencies.
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Reuters reported that well-informed opposition lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak tipped Svyrydenko to take up the post of ambassador to the US; while the new PM was most likely to be Serhiy Koretskyi, head of state energy company Naftogaz. Lawmakers said other possible successors included Svyrydenko’s predecessor, Denys Shmyhal, currently energy minister; or Mykhailo Fedorov, the defence minister.
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Zelenskyy said Ukraine was “changing its political strategy” and he had offered Svyrydenko the opportunity to lead “a new, important area” in Ukraine’s relations with a key international partner. It comes after the Nato summit in Ankara where a thaw in relations with Donald Trump’s administration was evident, and the US president promised to give Ukraine a licence to build Patriot air defence missiles.
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Over the past year, Ukraine has been shaken by its largest corruption scandal, which led to the resignation of the influential head of the presidential administration. Zelenskyy also triggered protests in 2025 when he moved to strip anti-corruption bodies of their independence. The president was forced to back down.
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Drone attacks killed three people and wounded five in the Moscow region, the governor said on Monday, as Ukraine continues to target Russian oil and gas facilities and military-related factories. “In the settlement of Pionersky in Istra, three people were killed and three more wounded as a result of a drone falling,” Andrey Vorobyov said. Two more people were wounded in another part of the region, the governor said, adding that air defences shot down 81 drones over the region.
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Ukrainian drones on Monday morning blew up an oil depot in Mikhailovsk city in Russia’s Stavropol region, social media channels from both Russia and Ukraine said. “An enemy drone attack is being repelled in the vicinity of Stavropol,” the regional governor, Vladimir Vladimirov, posted online – a Russian version of events that often follows a strategic target being hit.
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Earlier, a Ukrainian attack hit the Syzran oil refinery in the Samara region of Russia’s south-west, Russian media said. Pictures showed plumes of black smoke rising over the site. Officials said one person was killed and the regional governor, Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, said a child was one of three injured. Ukraine denies targeting civilians.
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Russia was forced to suspend shipping in the Sea of Azov after 90 vessels were targeted by Ukrainian drones in less than a week, Luke Harding writes from Kyiv. Ukraine’s drone forces chief, Robert Brovdi, said on Sunday that his units had hit 10 tankers and four ferries overnight, as well as a major oil refinery in the city of Syzran. There had been several strikes on electricity substations in occupied Crimea, he added.
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Ukraine’s allies known as the “coalition of the willing” will be meeting in Paris on Monday for talks on pressuring Russia to end its more than four-year war. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said in Ankara that he would use the summit to unveil new defence initiatives and joint military exercises. The meeting will also focus on tackling Russia’s shadow fleet, new military capabilities for Ukraine, greater mobilisation of defence industries and deeper operational cooperation among Kyiv’s backers, Macron said. Keir Starmer, Britain’s outgoing prime minister, is among those expected to be in Paris, as well as EU leaders Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa. Two more countries, Moldova and North Macedonia, have joined the coalition, the Elysee said.
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A French presidency official said the focus would be anti-ballistic-missile cooperation ranging from sourcing more US Patriot interceptors and advancing the deployment of the Franco-Italian SAMP-T air defence system to looking at how the European and Ukrainian defence industries could develop alternatives. One option under consideration was for different European nations to cooperate on a system that would complement SAMP-T and/or Patriot and give Ukraine a significant role in production.
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the late US senator Lindsey Graham as “a true defender of freedom and the values that make our world safer”. Graham, 71, died on Saturday, reportedly from a massive heart attack. He had just returned from a trip to Ukraine and was a staunch supporter of its battle against Vladimir Putin’s invasion. David Smith writes that on Friday, Graham had announced an agreement with the Trump administration to move forward on a package of sanctions against Russia.
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Russian drones attacked Odesa on Sunday evening, Ukrainian regional officials said. Earlier, a wave of Russian drones and missiles killed four people, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday. Three died in attacks on Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, including two in a strike on an “industrial enterprise” in the city of Kryvyi Rih, regional officials said. A separate drone attack on the southern city of Kherson killed a 48-year-old, said the mayor, Yaroslav Shanko. Ukrainian strikes on the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region meanwhile left four dead, Russian officials said.
