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New Ukrainian Parliament Announces First Key Government Positions

KIEV (Sputnik) - The appointments came after the acting Ukrainian cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, stepped down to allow newly-elected lawmakers to take their seats following snap elections on July 21.
Sputnik

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Deputy Head of Office Oleksiy Honcharuk was elected on Thursday as the country's prime minister, with the support of 290 members of parliament (Rada), well ahead of the 226 votes needed.

The Rada also appointed the deputy head of the presidential administration Vadym Prystaiko as Ukraine's new foreign minister with 310 votes.

Andriy Zahorodniuk, a member of the supervisory board of state-owned defence conglomerate Ukroboronprom, was elected defence minister with 314 votes, while the first deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Ivan Bakanov was confirmed in his position.

The reshuffle also impacted key parliamentary positions with Dmytro Razumkov, Olena Kondratyuk, Ruslan Stefanchuk taking the positions of parliamentary speaker, deputy speaker and first deputy speaker respectively.

Ukraine held snap parliamentary elections on July 21. Zelenskyy's Servant of the People party secured 43.16 percent of the vote, followed by former Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko's Opposition Platform — For Life party with 13.05 percent, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's Fatherland party with 8.18 percent, the European Solidarity party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko with 8.10 percent and the Voice party, led by famous Ukrainian musician Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, with 5.82 percent.

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