On March 30, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired his first assistant Serhiy Shefir. He is an old friend of the president and his business partner.
The dismissal decrees also appeared on the website of the Presidentʼs Office:
- freelance adviser to the president Oleg Ustenko;
- staff adviser Serhii Trofimov;
- freelance adviser to the president Mykhailo Radutskyi;
- Natalia Pushkaryova, authorized representative of the President of Ukraine for volunteer activities;
- the authorized representative of the President of Ukraine for ensuring the rights of defenders of Ukraine Alyona Verbytska.
Serhii Shefir is a co-founder of the Kvartal 95 studio, whose artistic director was Volodymyr Zelenskyi before he was elected president. He was appointed first assistant to the head of state on May 21, 2019, the day after Zelenskyʼs inauguration.
In 2020, at a press conference, Zelensky called Shefir a person he trusts. Arsen Avakov, after resigning from the position of head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, called Shefir one of the smart people in Zelenskyiʼs circle, a person "who understands how dangerous it is not to take balanced opinions into account."