Yuliia Svyrydenko’s debut trip to the US as Ukraine’s Prime Minister began at a showcase of American capitalism.
On a late-August morning, she joined a crowd of investors in the Nasdaq building in Times Square to celebrate the first-ever American listing of a Ukrainian company, the telecom firm Kyivstar. Suspenseful music throbbed as a countdown clock ticked to zero and Svyrydenko rang the market’s opening bell.
It is rare for a Prime Minister to appear at the exchange, and even rarer for a company from a war-torn country to be listed on it. Svyrydenko, in a recent interview in Kyiv with The New York Times, said it showed “Ukraine is not only about donations, but it’s about business”.
Her words appeared calculated to resonate with President Donald Trump. He has long grumbled that the US has not received anything in return for the tens of billions of dollars it has poured into Ukraine’s war effort, mostly under his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr. With direct US financial assistance now off the table, Kyiv is working to convince Trump that it is no charity case but a place where lucrative business can be done, even in wartime.
Appointed by President Volodymyr Zelensky in mid-July, Svyrydenko, 39, seems tailor-made for that task. She has spent her career working in private businesses or on economic matters for regional and national governments. As economy minister, she negotiated a high-stakes minerals deal with the Trump administration that has become the foundation for the new business-oriented relationship between Kyiv and Washington.
Her appointment “was a message from Ukraine to the United States, to Trump”, said Mykola Davydiuk, a Kyiv-based political analyst.
Svyrydenko’s elevation also reflects a growing concentration of power under Zelensky, according to Kyiv-based Western diplomats and Ukrainian lawmakers. A trusted loyalist, she rose through his administration with the backing of his powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. Zelensky, Yermak and a small circle of advisers hold tight control over power in Ukraine, analysts say, as Parliament has been largely sidelined and opposition figures have been targeted by law enforcement and
security agencies.
Perhaps her biggest test came this year when Ukraine negotiated a deal to open its mineral riches to the US, hoping to win Trump’s favour by appealing to his mercantile
instincts.
Svyrydenko led the talks for Ukraine as they quickly grew tense. Washington made demands that felt to Ukrainian officials like outright extortion, such as granting the US half of their country’s mineral rights.
In late February, during a video call, treasury secretary Scott Bessent shouted at Svyrydenko that she had six minutes to accept a deal or the talks were over, according to one current Ukrainian official and one former official who were on the call and who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive exchange. Svyrydenko denied the conversation was tense.
Svyrydenko eventually secured better terms and signed the deal, forging what she called a trust-based “working relation with secretary Bessent”.
New York Times News Service