President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has dismissed the first deputy secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, Ruslan Demchenko.
Demchenko was Zelenskyy's adviser after 23 July 2019. Before this, since September 2014, he had been an adviser to President Petro Poroshenko. Under Viktor Yanukovych, Demchenko was the first deputy foreign minister of Ukraine, overseeing Russia and lobbying the "Kharkiv agreements". In June 2020, Zelenskyy appointed him
In 2018-19, Demchenko temporarily stepped in for Leonid Kuchma as head of the Ukrainian delegation to the trilateral contact group on Donbas.