Deputy Prime Minister Kachka, EU ambassador Chentsov swap roles in Ukraine government reshuffle

BRUSSELS, Belgium — President Volodymyr Zelensky has swapped the roles of the two men overseeing Ukraine's relations with the EU, bringing ambassador Vsevolod Chentsov back to Kyiv to serve as deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, and sending Taras Kachka as the ambassador to Brussels.

Zelensky's latest government reshuffle has proved controversial, particularly over the decision to fire Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. But the change in EU-facing jobs leaves the same names in place, just with the job titles switched.

Chentsov is a career diplomat with extensive experience in the EU. He first arrived in Brussels in 2007 for a four-year stint as deputy head of Ukraine's mission to the EU.

After that, he ran the foreign ministry's EU department from 2011-2017 before returning to Brussels as head of the Ukraine mission in 2021, where he has served ever since.

Kachka was appointed Kyiv's deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration in July 2025. In his one year in the role, Ukraine progressed on its EU membership bid with the formal opening of two so-called enlargement clusters.

Still, the pace of reforms passed by Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, slowed drastically.

That led to Kachka and the EU's Enlargement Commissioner, Marta Kos, issuing a joint statement in December 2025 listing 10 concrete steps to be taken by the end of 2026 on rule-of-law and anti-corruption work if Ukraine is ever to become an EU member.

While that Kachka-Kos plan got a lot of public attention, progress has nevertheless remained lacking.

EU officials privately lamented in June that only 15% of the reforms had been made.

At a press conference on July 14, Kos made clear that those reforms will still be needed.

"We have a clear schedule of what needs to be done, not just this year but also later. We are following closely all the points (of the Kachka-Kos plan) which are part of the fundamentals (enlargement criteria in cluster one)," Kos told reporters.

She later hailed Moldova as the "best performer" in the race for EU membership and offered particularly strong praise for the reforms Chisinau has been implementing to make regression on the rule of law impossible.

In addition to heading Ukraine's mission to the EU, Zelensky wrote on X that Kachka will be tasked with bilateral trade agreements.

One of the tasks Kyiv must undertake after unlocking the EU's external relations list of reforms on July 14 is to rework all of its trade agreements with third countries to ensure compliance with the EU's own agreements.

In the EU, trade policy is set by the bloc as a whole, not by individual countries, and so Kyiv's trade relationships must be brought 100% into line.