President Petro Poroshenko has dismissed a deputy head of his administration, Rostyslav Pavlenko, and appointed him the director of the National Institute of Strategic Studies instead of 79-year-old Volodymyr Horbulin.
Horbulin has headed the institute since August 2014. He will now work for the National Academy of Sciences. He is also a non-staff adviser to Poroshenko.
The president thanked the ex-head of the thinktank for his "huge contribution" to the development of Ukraine whose opinion is "always important for me".
Pavlenko joined the presidential administration in December 2014 to oversee humanitarian policy. He was a member of parliament of the seventh convocation on the list of Vitaliy Klitschko's Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms (UDAR).