Yuliia Svyrydenko
Yuliia Svyrydenko became Prime Minister of Ukraine in July 2025, the second woman to hold the office and the first in more than a decade. Born in 1985 in Chernihiv, she took degrees in economics and international economic relations, worked in retail management and then in regional administration, and was appointed head of the Chernihiv regional administration in 2019 at thirty-four. She moved to the presidential office as deputy head in 2020 and became Minister of Economy and First Deputy Prime Minister in November 2021, three months before the full-scale invasion. Her ministry took on wartime economic management: keeping firms operating and relocating them west, sustaining exports after the Black Sea ports were blockaded, administering the grain corridor arrangements, and handling the international financing on which the budget depends. She was the Ukrainian signatory of the minerals agreement with the United States concluded in April 2025 — the arrangement establishing a joint reconstruction investment fund with a share of revenues from Ukrainian critical minerals, oil and gas, which had been the subject of a public dispute between the two presidents in the Oval Office in February. The negotiated text was substantially better for Ukraine than the first American draft, dropping the retrospective claim on past aid. She replaced Denys Shmyhal, who had served five years, in a reshuffle presented as a shift towards domestic production of weapons and towards deregulation. Her government's central problems are manpower, energy infrastructure under sustained attack, and a budget deficit financed almost entirely from abroad. She is forty at appointment, one of the youngest prime ministers in Europe. The office in wartime Ukraine is subordinate to the presidency in practice, and her role is chiefly economic management. She retains the portfolio for the American minerals fund.
- Lived: 1985 CE – ?
- Nationality: Ukrainian
- Roles: Prime Minister of Ukraine (2025-present)
