KYIV, Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday dismissed his ambassador to the United States, Olga Stefanishyna, in a move that had been expected following a government reshuffle last month.<\/p>\n
The sacking, announced by decree, happened however as Kyiv was lobbying Washington hard to obtain more Patriot air defense missiles to block Russian strikes.<\/p>\n
In a Facebook post in which she also posted a letter asking to be relieved of her duties, Stefanishyna said the decision was her own and \u201cdictated by personal circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
She called her posting to Washington \u201cthe greatest honor\u201d of her life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe increased the supply of American weapons and maintained support precisely when the political climate in Washington was shifting against us,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Stefanishyna, a former deputy prime minister and justice minister, was nominated as ambassador in July last year.<\/p>\n
The role is crucial for Ukraine, which depends on US arms deliveries and intelligence-sharing in the conflict against Russia.<\/p>\n
Relations between Zelensky and his US counterpart Donald Trump have been strained and, at times, stormy.<\/p>\n
But the billionaire Republican former real estate mogul has recently been more encouraging toward the Ukrainian leader.<\/p>\n
According to Ukrainian media, Stefanishyna is under investigation by the country\u2019s anti-corruption agency on suspicion of wrongdoing, although she has not been formally accused.<\/p>\n
Zelensky, who made a controversial government reshuffle in July, has not yet announced who will replace Stefanishyna as ambassador in Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV, Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday dismissed his ambassador to the United States, Olga Stefanishyna, in a move that had been expected following a government reshuffle last month. The sacking, announced by decree, happened however as Kyiv was lobbying Washington hard to obtain more Patriot air defense missiles to block Russian strikes. In …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101230,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101232,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101218\/revisions\/101232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}