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Dmytro Kuleba, who was among several Ukrainian officials who offered to resign on Wednesday, lobbied forcefully for Kyiv’s allies to supply Patriot missile defense systems.
- Sept. 4, 2024, 10:41 a.m. ET
When Russian forces rolled across the border into Ukraine at the start of their full-scale invasion in February 2022, Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, compared the assault to Nazi Germany’s in World War II.
“Ukraine defeated that evil and will defeat this one,” Mr. Kuleba tweeted. Then he spelled out the country’s mission: “Stop Putin.”
That remained Mr. Kuleba’s central message for 30 months as he rallied wartime international support for Ukraine, courting allies old and new and becoming one of the most recognizable faces representing Kyiv’s cause.
Mr. Kuleba was the most senior of the cabinet officials who Ukraine’s parliament speaker said had offered to resign on Wednesday. It appeared to be the largest reshuffling of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s cabinet since the start of the war, a move Mr. Zelensky described as necessary to “achieve all the results we need.”
As Ukraine’s top diplomat, Mr. Kuleba sought to drum up both military and political support. He was a forceful advocate in the monthslong effort — eventually successful — to convince the United States and Germany to supply Ukraine with the Patriot air-defense system in order to protect against Russian missile attacks.
“Ukraine is currently the only country in the world that is subject to ballistic missile attacks almost every day,” he said during a news briefing in March. “Patriots should be deployed here, in Ukraine, to protect real human lives, and not to remain in places where the missile threat is zero.”
