President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appointed Mykola Balan commander of the National Guard.
He has been the deputy commander and, after Yuriy Allerov's dismissal, acting commander of the National Guard since 7 May.
According to the National Guard website, Balan was born in Ivano-Frankivsk. From 2010 to 2014 he was a department head at the Crimean territorial command of the Interior Ministry's Internal Troops.
On 18 April 2014, the Ukrainian president appointed him a deputy commander of the National Guard.
Today, Zelenskyy dismissed National Guard deputy commander for logistics Oleh Kulyk. He appointed Volodymyr Kondratyuk (chief of the Southern territorial directorate of the National Guard) as first deputy commander of the National Guard, Ruslan Dzyuba (head of the finance and economy directorate at the National Guard) and Yuriy Lebed (chief of the Eastern territorial directorate of the National Guard) as deputy commanders.
Deputy commander Yaroslav Spodar kept the post.
Under the law, the National Guard commander is nominated by the interior minister and appointed and dismissed by the president.