On 20 May, Petro Poroshenko will step down as president of Ukraine to allow President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskyy to take office.
In his last presidential address, he thanked "the great Ukrainian nation for the great honour to work in charge of the great country for five years". "We have saved Ukraine and buried Novorossia. We have stopped the aggressor who is much stronger than us. We have created the army which became one of the strongest ones on the continent," he said. He again apologized to all those whose expectations he did not meet. Poroshenko confirmed that he was not leaving politics and wished Zelenskyy success.
President Petro Poroshenko has accepted the resignation of the secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, Oleksandr Turchynov, who has held the post since December 2014. The latter tendered his resignation letter on 17 May due to the end of Poroshenko's presidential tenure.
Poroshenko also accepted the resignation of the head of his administration, Ihor Raynin, deputy head Serhiy Marchenko, the first deputy and the president's representative to the Cabinet of Ministers, Vitaliy Kovalchuk.
President Petro Poroshenko decorated US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker with the Yaroslav the Wise Order of the 5th grade for his "significant contribution to the support and development of democracy in Ukraine"/
Ukraine's representative in the trilateral contact group (TCG) on the settlement of the Donbas conflict, Yevhen Marchuk, has left it. He has represented Ukraine in the security subgroup since 2014. In November 2018, he became Ukraine's representative in the TCG.
Rock singer Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, who created the Voice party to run in the parliamentary election in October 2019, said its list would include no current MPs. However, he added, there are many "wonderful MPs with whom we share opinions and values".
A former deputy head of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych's administration, Andriy Portnov, said on 19 May that he returned to Ukraine. "Friends, I have not been to my country for over five years. And today I want to send a confident signal to thousands of people who left Ukraine: it is time to return, build and rebuild. Hello, my dear Homeland," he said in a Telegram post showing him in what appears to be Kyiv's Zhulyany airport.
Activists removed a fence around the construction site in Instytutska Street in Kyiv where people got killed during the Euromaydan antigovernment protests in 2014. They insist that this memorial area cannot be altered until the investigative actions are over.
A deposit of 4.8m hryvnyas has been made for an ex-commander of the National Guard, Yuriy Allerov, who is suspected of embezzling state property, according to his lawyer Ihor Moroz. However, Allerov is still in custody. The lawyer expects him to be released next week.