Parliament has dismissed Minister of Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko with 321 votes, according to social media posts by MPs Oleksiy Honcharenko and Yaroslav Zheleznyak.
In 2020, Tkachenko's appointment as culture minister was supported by 263 MPs.
Tkachenko is a former general producer of 1+1 Media and a former MP from the Servant of the People party. In his speech before his appointment as culture minister in June 2020, he stated that the ministry's top priority would be to restore and increase funding for the cultural sector.
His ministerial tenure was marked by several high-profile scandals, including the reorganisation of the Dovzhenko Centre, which was eventually declared illegal, and the confrontation between the Ministry of Culture and the Kyiv authorities over the recognition of buildings as landmark monuments. At the time, Tkachenko and Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko traded accusations of not preserving Kyiv's architecture. Regarding the reorganisation, Tkachenko claimed that he did not know about it, saying that the State Film Agency was outside his scope of authority.
The issue of Tkachenko's dismissal finally arose on 20 July, when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal to consider replacing the minister of culture and information policy amid a scandal over the UAH 33 million state funding of producer Yuriy Horbunov's TV series. Zelenskyy also suggested that Shmyhal find extra-budgetary funds for essential projects.
Several petitions were also filed to demand Tkachenko's dismissal. Shmyhal said at the time that it was impossible to establish the facts and circumstances sufficient for his dismissal.