Oksana Markarova will be recalled from Washington as part of measures to strengthen relations with Trump’s team.
Volodymyr Zelensky is replacing Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, who has been heavily criticized by leading Republicans, as part of a diplomatic reshuffle aimed at strengthening relations with the Trump administration.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga confirmed on Wednesday that Oksana Markarova will be recalled from Washington after four years in the post. He described her as “extremely effective, charismatic and one of our most successful ambassadors.”
He indicated that several high-ranking ambassadors in G7 and G20 countries would also be transferred, telling Ukrainian radio: “Every diplomat has a rotation cycle.”
The diplomatic reshuffle comes at a critical moment in the war. Russian troops are advancing on a 600-kilometer front, and their pace has accelerated in recent weeks. A Kremlin spokesman said, “We are advancing.”
Russian combat units have approached the crossing into the Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time.
Late on Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, Russia launched its largest air strike since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022. It involved a record number of 728 Shahed drones, as well as 13 cruise and ballistic missiles. Most of them were shot down.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson is among the Republican figures who have criticized Markarova, accusing her of supporting the Democratic Party and its candidate Kamala Harris ahead of last November’s presidential election.
In February, she was photographed with her head in her hands during Vladimir Zelensky’s disastrous meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
After Zelensky visited a shell factory in Pennsylvania last September, calls for her resignation were heard.
Markarova organized the visit and did not invite a single Republican, Johnson said at the time.
Ukrainian officials deny any bias, but acknowledge that the ambassador previously had a good relationship with the Biden administration and was close to Victoria Nuland, then deputy secretary of state for political affairs.
Zelensky and Trump discussed Markarova’s resignation during a phone call last Friday, which the Ukrainian president called the most constructive to date.
On Tuesday, Trump expressed growing dissatisfaction with Vladimir Putin and announced the resumption of US arms deliveries to Kyiv. His statement followed a week-long pause, apparently ordered by US Defense Secretary Pete Hageett.
The shipment includes Patriot interceptor missiles and other high-precision weapons. It is unclear how many units will be transferred. The American news site Axios reported that 10 missiles will be delivered — a negligible amount at a time when Moscow has sharply intensified its bombing of Ukrainian cities.
The night raid targeted the northwestern city of Lutsk. At least six civilians were killed and 39 wounded in several other regions of the country, including Kharkiv and Donetsk in the northeast and east, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.
According to local authorities, a one-year-old boy named Dmitry was killed in the village of Pravdino in the Kherson region when Russians struck his home with drones. The boy lived with his great-grandmother.
One of the possible successors to Markarova in Washington is Igor Zhovka, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s administration.
Zhovka’s immediate superior is Andriy Yermak, whom many consider the most influential person in Ukrainian politics after Zelensky.
Other candidates include Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko and Olga Stefanishyna, who is Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration and Minister of Justice.
There is growing optimism in Kyiv that Trump’s shift toward Russia earlier this year has been halted, if not completely reversed. One former Ukrainian official attributed this transformation to Jonathan Powell, Britain’s national security adviser and an experienced negotiator.
Powell played an important role in mending Zelensky’s tense relationship with Washington after the Oval Office incident.
He advised the Ukrainian government to avoid confrontation with the US president and take his words at face value.
According to the official, this approach, known as “strategic patience,” has begun to bear fruit.
Zelensky agreed to US proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, repeatedly praised Trump’s leadership, and signed an agreement giving American investors access to Ukraine’s valuable natural resources.
On Wednesday, he met with Pope Francis in Rome ahead of a two-day international conference organized to help Ukraine with post-war reconstruction. Zelensky said they discussed the return of Ukrainian children and civilians abducted by Russia, as well as the Vatican’s offer to facilitate peace talks.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will attend the conference. During a recent phone call with Trump, Merz reportedly offered to buy Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems from the US and send them to Ukraine.
Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, will also arrive in Rome, where he is likely to hold talks on arms supplies with Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.
On July 8, PJSC National Energy Company (NEC) Ukrenergo announced a tender for voluntary medical insurance services for employees.
According to the Prozorro electronic public procurement system, the expected cost of the services is UAH 88.013 million. Applications for participation will be accepted until July 16. As reported, the winner of a similar tender a year earlier was SD TAS. The company’s price offer at that time was UAH 58.793 million, which was almost the same as the expected cost. Ukrenergo operates trunk and interstate power lines and provides centralized dispatching of the country’s unified energy system. NEC is a state-owned enterprise under the authority of the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry of Ukraine.
PJSC Ukrnafta is implementing six projects for gas piston and gas turbine units with a capacity of 420 MW and plans to build a CCHP (Combined Cooling, Heating, and Power, i.e., the production of electricity, heat, and cold from a single source – IF-U) system with a capacity of 250 MW, according to the company’s acting director, Yuriy Tkachuk.
“Our portfolio consists of 420 MW of generating capacity. These are six large projects that combine gas piston and gas turbine technologies. And we will build a large 250 MW CCHP project. All the assets we aim to install will be installed in 2026,” Tkachuk said during a panel discussion on investing in energy sustainability and recovery in Ukraine as part of URC-2025 in Rome on Wednesday, according to an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent at the event.
According to him, all capacities are renewable and are being installed in central, eastern, and western Ukraine, and electricity will be generated using associated gas from production.
“In this way, we will support our energy system through these projects,” Tkachuk said.
He added that after Ukrnafta was transferred to the state in 2022, “we began to develop its new history.”
As Tkachuk emphasized, Ukrnafta currently provides 99% of petroleum product supplies to the Ministry of Defense, and despite this, it has launched a new direction, namely electricity production, which is very important in the context of the significant destruction of Russia’s energy capacities.
“Thanks to international financial institutions, Norway, Sweden, Germany, our state, and the government, we have launched a distributed power generation project,” the head of Ukrnafta emphasized.
Ukraine has received the third tranche of aid under the ARISE project — over UAH 1 billion, which will be used to support Ukrainian small producers and farms, the Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food said on Telegram.
The minister noted that payments are currently being made in three areas: subsidies per hectare of cultivated land, subsidies for keeping cows, and subsidies for keeping goats and sheep. Payments are being made by the Ukrderzhfond. The Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food plans to complete them by the end of July.
Producers who are registered in the State Agricultural Register, have submitted their applications on time in accordance with all requirements, did not receive such assistance last year, and are included in the approved lists of recipients are eligible for assistance.
Ukrainian metallurgical enterprises increased pig iron production by 5.8% in January–June 2025 compared to the same period last year, to 3.669 million tons, according to Ukrmetallurgprom.
In June, 661,900 tons of pig iron were smelted, which is more than in May (644,700 tons).
In 2024, pig iron production in Ukraine grew by 18.1% to 7.090 million tons, after falling in 2023 to 6.003 million tons and a disastrous 2022, when production fell by almost 70%.
In January–June 2025, Ukrainian metallurgical enterprises reduced total rolled steel production by 2.2% compared to the same period last year, to 3.070 million tons.
Steel production during this period decreased even more significantly, by 4.9%, to 3.683 million tons, according to operational data from the Ukrmetallurgprom association.
In June, metallurgists produced 563,000 tons of rolled products (in May — 524,900 tons) and 621,400 tons of steel (in May — 635,800 tons), which indicates slight fluctuations from month to month.
For comparison, in 2024, rolled steel production in Ukraine increased by 15.8% to 6.222 million tons, and steel production increased by 21.6% to 7.575 million tons.
