On the evening of 12 July, Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko left the President's Office at a brisk pace, visibly shaken.
It wasn't the first time she had walked out of the President's Office in tears. In late 2020, at the very beginning of her rise within Volodymyr Zelenskyy's team, Andrii Yermak, then head of the President's Office, decided to appoint Svyrydenko as his deputy for economic affairs. At the time she was little more than the "seventh deputy minister" under then-economy minister Tymofii Mylovanov. An interview with Oleh Tatarov and whatever was in his notorious "folder" [a dossier containing compromising material – ed.] proved to be a deeply distressing experience for her. [Oleh Tatarov is the deputy head of the President's Office who oversees law enforcement coordination and has long been regarded as one of Ukraine's most influential officials. A former Interior Ministry official under President Viktor Yanukovych, he remains a controversial figure because of past corruption allegations (which he denies) and his perceived influence over Ukraine's law enforcement agencies. Svyrydenko was deeply upset during her 2020 interview with Tatarov, reportedly because of the contents of the dossier that was presented to her before she was appointed as a deputy head of the President's Office – ed.]
Nearly six years have passed since then. Svyrydenko climbed to the very top of Ukraine's government hierarchy, yet even that wasn't enough to protect her. Her years of devoted service to Zelenskyy, finding ways to implement even his most populist ideas, did not earn the prime minister even the courtesy of a proper explanation for her dismissal.