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Sergii Koretskyi was confirmed as Ukraine’s new Prime Minister on Thursday as part of a government reshuffle led by President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Koretskyi's appointment, backed by Zelensky's Servant of the People party, was approved by the Ukrainian parliament with 289 members voting in his favor.

Outlining his “clear set of priorities,” Koretskyi said his key target is to “fully equip Ukraine’s Defense Forces and accelerate the expansion of our defense industrial base.” 

While emphasizing the importance of strengthening relations with international partners, Koretskyi mentioned “securing additional resources” as another goal.

Ukraine’s “strategic course remains unchanged,” he said, referencing the country’s long-harbored desire to gain “full membership in the European Union.” 

Zelensky’s broader government reshuffle, which included the surprise move of replacing popular Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, is intended to strengthen Ukraine's diplomatic efforts and accelerate the implementation of agreements on military support.

Ukraine is hoping to begin manufacturing Patriot missile interceptors after U.S. President Donald Trump said during the NATO summit in Turkey last week that the U.S. would extend Ukraine a license to manufacture the defensive weaponry as the country continues to defend itself against Russia.

Zelensky confirmed the government's new direction over the weekend, embracing a fresh political strategy.

“Each priority area of foreign policy will be assigned to a specific person with substantial experience who is capable of implementing what we agree on at the leaders’ level and what the Ukrainian people expect,” he said. 

“The most important of these areas include the United States and our agreements on licenses to manufacture Patriot systems.”

Zelensky identified preparations for winter as another major priority, as years of Russian strikes have targeted Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

“Preparing for winter is an extremely important priority, and Ukraine must be ready for every threat that may arise,” he added.

Outgoing Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said it had been an “honor” to serve in government, as leaders across the world welcomed Koretskyi.

“We are confident that you will place Ukraine's European integration at the heart of the country’s transformation effort,” said European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. “You can count on our full support as you advance your ambitious reform agenda.”

With the world’s focus on Koretskyi as he takes on the position of Ukraine's third wartime Prime Minister, here’s what to know about the newly-appointed figure.

Koretskyi built his career in Ukraine's energy industry

Koretskyi has never held elected office, gaining his experience in Ukraine's energy sector.

Since May 2025, he has served as CEO of Naftogaz, Ukraine's state oil and gas company,  responsible for much of the country's gas production, imports, and supply.

Before that, he was the director of the oil refinery operator Ukrtatnafta and Ukrnafta, Ukraine's lead oil-producing company.

Earlier in his career, Koretskyi headed the Western Oil Group and served as CEO of the Continuum Group.

He holds degrees in mechanical engineering and business economics from Lutsk Technical University, as well as a degree in oil and gas production from Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas.

Koretskyi's record as an energy executive is widely viewed as an asset.

An audit published in 2024 found that Ukrnafta generated a net profit of 23.6 billion Ukrainian hryvnia (about $529 million) under his leadership in 2023. 

Another notable achievement came when Ukrnafta secured an €80 million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 2024 to build a distributed gas-generation system, highlighting Koretskyi's ability to obtain financing.

Koretskyi already has an international profile

Koretskyi announced in February that Naftogaz had, for the first time, begun importing American liquefied natural gas through a terminal in Lithuania, in an effort to “increase the reliability and continuity of gas supplies to our consumers.” 

The move underscored Koretskyi’s attention in relation to the domestic crisis that faces Ukrainians each winter. 

During his tenure as CEO of the state-owned energy company, Koretskyi became a prominent public voice on the impact of Russia's attacks.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion, the country's energy infrastructure has repeatedly come under attack, with the United Nations reporting that millions of Ukrainians have faced prolonged power shortages during the coldest months.

Earlier this year, much of Kyiv was left without electricity as Russian strikes on power facilities caused widespread outages across the capital.

“Four years of continuous attacks on energy infrastructure and daily work to ensure warmth and comfort in people’s homes. Four years of endurance and resilience of the entire country,” Koretskyi said in February, marking the anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion.

His background is likely to prove particularly valuable as Ukraine prepares for another difficult winter.

In March, Koretskyi met with a delegation from the U.S. Department of the Treasury to discuss “expanding financial instruments to increase purchases of U.S. LNG and equipment.”

Three months later, Naftogaz signed an agreement with the Export-Import Bank of the United State. “The document provides for the potential mobilisation of up to USD 300 million to purchase American equipment needed to restore Ukrainian oil and gas infrastructure destroyed by Russia,” Koretskyi said. 

Koretskyi is a prominent figure in Zelensky’s circle

Koretskyi frequently represents Ukraine's energy sector during meetings abroad.

He was part of the delegation that accompanied Zelensky to the NATO summit last week, where the Ukrainian President met with world leaders, including Trump.

“Work is underway to ensure that the agreements reached during today’s meetings deliver practical results for the country,” Koretskyi said on July 9, reflecting his increasingly prominent role within Ukraine.

In late June, during the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Poland—held to discuss rebuilding and reconstruction priorities for Ukraine—Koretskyi met with world leaders and helped secure “tangible results for Naftogaz Group and Ukraine’s energy sector as a whole.”

“A total of 12 agreements were signed to strengthen Ukraine’s energy resilience and deliver critically important projects,” he said, at the close of the conference.

Koretskyi has regularly briefed Zelensky on the country's energy sector, while helping coordinate efforts to strengthen Ukraine's resilience.

"If we're heading into winter, we have to be ready," Zelensky said on Wednesday. "We've been preparing for it for a long time already, but the priorities are clear: Getting the country ready for winter. That's why, after all the consultations, Sergii Koretskyi is probably the best-prepared person to serve as Ukraine's Prime Minister."

Joan Sebastian Guerrero, the 26-year-old man shot by ICE while driving to work on Monday, attended the same school my mother did in Bucaramanga, Colombia: Nuestra Señora del Pilar. 

My mother remembers Nuestra Señora del Pilar as a place of hushed corridors and wind-swept balconies, where nuns ushered her from class to class. Students went to church every morning. 

In Maine, Guerrero worked cleaning at a veterinary clinic, and then he delivered food. He loved his three-year-old. A joint statement by the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine said he had legal status, a work permit, a Social Security number. 

A witness tells the Portland Press Herald that Guerrero’s last words were, "I tried to stop."

In one photo from his social media, Guerrero poses before a mirror. Through his clear phone case, you can see two photos of his pregnant wife, displaying her belly, hugging him over his shoulder.

One video published by The Bangor Daily News shows agents pulling his unmoving body out of the driver’s seat—then handcuffing him. It is unclear if he is alive. I wondered how much fear must have been in the minds of those ICE agents that they felt the need to still restrain him.

Just six days earlier, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed by ICE agents in Houston, this time shot through the passenger window. The ICE agents were in an unmarked vehicle, and though they said they were in pursuit and their emergency lights were on, a video shows they were not. Salgado was dead within minutes.

As a Latina, it is impossible for me not to see my father when I think of Guerrero and Araujo. In them, I see men who wanted nothing but a better life for their children. Families like mine can’t help but feel their families’ pain, and fear for each other and our own. 

In June 2025, my dad got his green card. It was something we had long worked toward in the years before COVID. Filing for his documents, paying the fees, getting certificates and letters stamped and translated. He was happy, relieved. He sent me photos of the permission in his passport. He scanned it, printed it, and even worked it into passing conversations with people at the grocery store in Mexico City, at the shoe store. He couldn’t stop sharing. “I’m going to the United States!” 

I wished my dad would tone it down. While he had received his documents, my mother’s had been rejected. The application fees changed, and my sister, who was filing for my mother, had paid the previous amount. She was told the money would not be returned to us and would need to start the whole process for my mother again. While my father happily bought a plane ticket in June 2025, headed to Minnesota to start his life alongside my sister and his grandchildren, my mother remained in Mexico, alone.

My dad lost 20 pounds while living in Minnesota. He watched, as we all did, as ICE stormed cities across the country: Los Angeles, Portland, Minneapolis. 

My father feared going outside, understanding that how he looked—brown and indigenous— put him at risk. My father, documented, afraid, still went every day to pick up his granddaughters at their school bus stop. 

He has nothing to fear, I kept telling myself. Then, Does he have nothing to fear? The truth was I feared for him too. 

Throughout 2025, as my mother lived alone for the first time in her life, I called her every day during lunchtime. My mother hates cooking, as do I and we entertained ourselves by complaining about the slimy texture of onions over speakerphone. Our conversations turned, always, to my father. 

“Your father makes himself a knot worrying,” she said one day. “He’s afraid they’ll pick him up and decide to take away his green card,” she said. “So what! They put him in a plane, then it’s over.”

 Sometimes, I tiptoe around my mother’s feelings. In this case, I needed her to understand. I told her the fear was being taken, regardless of paperwork, and being held in an ICE detention facility. During the second Trump Administration, these facilities had become more dangerous than ever. 

Tens of thousands of people have been held in ICE detention, 70% of whom have no criminal convictions. Still, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) drums up fear of immigrants. 

“Over the weekend, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) law enforcement arrested more worst of the worst criminals across the country, including those convicted for murder, sexual assault of children, aggravated assault, drug trafficking, and other despicable crimes,” DHS declared this week. 

Where will l these pounding drums lead to?

Last December, on his way back to Mexico City to see my mother and take her to medical appointments, my father was afraid ICE would be at the airport, that they might apprehend him and hold him indefinitely. He asked me to send him the citation for when I was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. I sent him a PDF with all my awards. He printed them and he put them in a folder that not only included all his legal documentation, but other documents that made a case for his humanity. This broke my heart. I waited all day by my phone for him to say that he was safe. Sat on pins and needles. I flitted between thinking our fear unlikely and reasonable. The drumming up of fear made me afraid.

My family of four lived in Colombia amidst the uncertainty and fear in the 90s. My father was kidnapped by FARC, the violent Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia. He was let go in the end. We continued to receive threatening calls to our home. In 1998, we left Bogotá. Since that time, we have dreamt of finding a place to live together in peace. We hoped it would be in the United States.

Now, I often think about the irony of us escaping Colombia only to be seized by the fear of detention in America. 

In April, my dad returned to the U.S. He was nervous at the airport once again, not knowing what would happen to him. Increasingly in my family, we ask the question of where we will live. It seems altogether out of the question that we will all live together in the United States.

When I call my mother, like all mothers of her age must do, she lists all the things going wrong with her body. She says, "Nobody calls to ask me how I am." Even though that is what I am doing. "Nobody calls me," says my father, when I call him. What is clear to me is that they miss each other. The fullness of what they are to each other when they are together none of us can be for each of them. 

Here I am 41-years-old, parenting my parents through their feelings, but also through the inhumanity of a broken immigration system. 

The deaths of Salgado and Guerrero are a collective grief. To grieve is to take stock of what we have lost, can lose, and to spend time deconstructing the harmful narratives that cause our grief. What happens to a country where going to work is enough to get killed?

I fear that, tragically, maybe my family’s story, which started with fear, must continue with fear. 

What of all the other stories of migrant families?

When Mallory McMorrow suspended her Senate campaign in Michigan earlier this month, Democrats across the ideological spectrum assumed her departure would benefit Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive favorite who appeared closer to her politically.

Less than three weeks before primary day, the first public polling since her exit suggests the opposite may be happening. 

Two surveys released over the past week have put Rep. Haley Stevens ahead of El-Sayed in the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, reversing an earlier trend that had shown El-Sayed, a former Detroit health director, with a narrow advantage. While political analysts caution that one round of polling is far from definitive, the results are scrambling expectations around one of the most consequential Senate races in the country.

McMorrow, a state senator, suspended her campaign on July 5. A Detroit News/WDIV-TV poll conducted July 8 through July 11 found Stevens leading El-Sayed 48% to 41% among likely Democratic primary voters. Another survey by Tavern Research also showed Stevens ahead by one point.

Read More: Democratic Senate Hopeful Abdul El-Sayed Is Running Against Both Parties

Before El-Sayed entered the race in April 2025, McMorrow was widely viewed as the Democrat best positioned to occupy the party's progressive lane. But El-Sayed—who has been endorsed by the United Auto Workers, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib—quickly established himself as the campaign's leading progressive voice, running on Medicare for All, organized labor, and an overhaul of U.S. policy toward Israel.

That left McMorrow struggling to carve out a distinct political identity between El-Sayed's insurgent campaign and Stevens' establishment-backed bid. "I've always maintained that had Abdul El-Sayed not been in the race, McMorrow would have been the progressive darling," says David Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University in the Detroit area. "She got outflanked by El-Sayed, and that left her very little room to maneuver."

So far, McMorrow has not endorsed either Stevens or El-Sayed. On Monday, Peters, the retiring incumbent, formally endorsed Stevens.

The primary is drawing an explosion of outside spending, most of it for Stevens. Since early May, outside groups have spent nearly $50 million on television and digital advertising to boost Stevens and attack El-Sayed, including more than $25 million from the super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Other Democratic groups aligned with the party establishment have also invested heavily on Stevens' behalf. 

AIPAC’s involvement has become a lightning rod in the race, in which the two candidates’ differences on U.S. support for Israel has emerged as a dominant issue. Stevens has defended continued U.S. military aid to Israel while calling for a two-state solution, placing herself largely within the Democratic mainstream before the war in Gaza transformed the party's politics. El-Sayed has become one of the country's most outspoken Democratic critics of Israel, accusing it of committing genocide in Gaza and calling for an end to American military assistance. The issue has become central in Michigan, home to the country’s largest Arab American population and the birthplace of the "uncommitted" movement that protested former President Joe Biden’s handling of the war.

Even so, Stevens has tried to focus her campaign more on manufacturing, tariffs, and the economic consequences of President Trump's policies, arguing that those concerns remain voters' top priorities. 

El-Sayed, meanwhile, has leaned on an energized national progressive network. His campaign reported raising $4.57 million during the most recent fundraising quarter—more than double what either Stevens or Republican Mike Rogers raised. Stevens raised $2.1 million during the same period, though she reported more cash on hand at the end of June. 

Dulio cautioned against reading too much into the initial batch of polls about how McMorrow's supporters are shifting. "We don't know that more of her voters haven't split toward El-Sayed," he says. "I don't think we have enough evidence yet to say that's wrong or right."

A new Data for Progress poll commissioned by American Priorities, a pro-El-Sayed super PAC, shows him ahead by 13 points—though surveys sponsored by groups backing a specific candidate can often be less reliable.

El-Sayed is hoping to be the latest high-profile primary win for progressives, who have recently prevailed in races in several deep-blue cities and states. Yet Michigan remains one of the nation's most evenly divided political battlegrounds, drawing concerns among many in the party about whether El-Sayed can beat Rogers in November. Democrats won the state's other Senate seat by fewer than 20,000 votes in 2024, and Republicans view Peters' retirement as one of their best pickup opportunities this cycle.

El-Sayed has argued that Democrats should focus less on nominating the candidate perceived as safest for November and more on offering voters a bold economic agenda centered on expanding health care, strengthening labor unions, and confronting corporate influence. His campaign has cast the race as an opportunity for Democrats to embrace a more ambitious vision that would be better positioned to energize voters to turnout in November. 

“I think this election could be a real change election,” says former Michigan Rep. Andy Levin, a progressive backing El-Sayed. “There's going to be several people around the country who show that the way to win purple districts isn't necessarily to run to the middle. It's to just be really honest and straightforward and make working-class people believe you will actually fight for them, and you won't be bought, and you won't be led astray by all of the fancy Washington interests.”

The last 80 years of American science have been defined by one letter, penned by the president of the United States.

In November 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Vannevar Bush, director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, which had become the largest scientific research program in American history over the course of  World War II. Roosevelt asked how their work could “be used in the days of peace ahead for the improvement of the national health, the creation of new enterprises bringing new jobs, and the betterment of the national standard of living.” 

The essay Vannevar Bush wrote in response, “Science—The Endless Frontier,” described a new system for the federal support of scientific research. Its positive impact—and remarkable success at fulfilling Roosevelt’s request—has been immeasurable, channeling hundreds of billions of dollars into American science and making the U.S. the world leader in scientific research.  

The Office of Management and Budget’s proposed rule change that would grant political employees final review of federal research funding is the latest action in a long, bruising 18 months for science. Attempts to shield research from political influence and bureaucratic processes have instead caused more of both. And although bipartisan Congressional efforts have pushed back on some of the deepest cuts, damage was still done, damming the flow of funding, halting experiments, delaying new research, and impeding the work of scientists worldwide. 

Our country needs a new consensus on how to support science. With the first quarter of the 21st century behind us, and as we look to the future, we have a duty to address valid criticisms of how we pursue science while recommitting to the most essential elements of Vannevar Bush’s vision: partnership between government, industry, and academia, international scientific collaboration, and support for exploratory basic research. The loss of these tenets would be devastating for science, for the nation, and for human advancement.

Before World War II, the U.S. dedicated minimal government funding to scientific research. The war not only devastated Europe—the continent that for centuries had powered scientific discovery for the world—but also sent European scientists to burgeoning American laboratories, where they found rich veins of government funding that believed science was key to winning the war. Penicillin and anti-malarial drugs kept Allied troops alive; radar and code-breaking computers kept far-flung units in communication; and the atomic bomb helped bring the war, however tragically, to a close.

In “Science—The Endless Frontier,” Vannevar Bush argued for a system in which the federal government would continue funding this kind of scientific research at academic institutions across the country. The governing entity Bush proposed became the National Science Foundation (NSF), which still distributes federal funds via merit-based competitive applications, reviewed by scientific experts rather than political appointees, to support academic and industry researchers. In the 1950s and 1960s, NSF, alongside other government funders such as the National Institutes of Health and Departments of Defense and Energy, created an ecosystem in which science could flourish.

In many ways, Bush’s system has been phenomenally effective. Federal agencies spent nearly $50 billion in 2024 on basic research alone, and as of that year, NIH is the largest funder of health research in the world. More than 99% of the drugs discovered in the United States between 2010 and 2020 relied on federal funding. And the American research and education system has become the most prolific and effective in the world, with 82% of the scientific Nobel laureates who received prizes in the last 25 years doing some part of their education or training in the United States. 

It is also a system we have both benefited from and participated in ourselves: Wendy has spent the better part of 20 years working with scientific researchers, and Eric’s doctorate was funded by NSF. Now, we work to support scientists throughout their careers, providing multi-year, open-ended funding, access to emerging technologies, and a chance to pursue globe-spanning, interdisciplinary collaborations. 

But there have long been valid critiques of the American scientific ecosystem, including from scientists themselves. Excessive competition and bureaucratic requirements have created a system in which some scientists spend almost half of their time applying for federal funding. Existing grantmaking rules also favor highly specialized, rather than interdisciplinary, work, even though the challenges the world faces today, from protecting public health to building trustworthy AI to securing our planet’s resources, require diverse expertise to address. Grants also often can’t provide the large-scale technological resources and computing power much of today’s researchers require. 

Reforming how American science is funded could benefit scientists, and science, in the long run. As we imagine the promise of a different future, we have an obligation to honor Vannevar Bush’s vision—a vision that brought us humanity’s most innovative century yet. 

Primary to that system is a collaborative scientific research ecosystem, one in which government, academia, and industry each fill different but equally important roles, alongside philanthropy. Philanthropy has long funded American scientific research, from pre-war disease eradication projects to the discovery of DNA, and the share of U.S. scientific funding provided by the private sector has only increased in the past several decades: philanthropic funding now rivals that of some of the largest government funding agencies. Philanthropies, including U.S.-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute, are among the top 10 health funders in the world. Scientific breakthroughs can be funded by a variety of sectors, jointly or sequentially. Though their exact roles may shift in a new scientific ecosystem, we need to support and deepen their collaboration. 

Science should also remain an area of tight-knit international cooperation. The last century gave us ambitious, globe-spanning efforts like the International Space Station, the Human Genome Project, and the Large Hadron Collider—and the advances in robotics, climate, medicine, and physics they enabled. Just as critically, immigration and a culture of multi-national education have fueled the American scientific enterprise for generations. Today, nearly half of all STEM doctoral and master’s students are international, and three of the six 2025 American scientific Nobel laureates were born outside of the United States. Limitations on the flow of international talent and expertise will only constrain American success in the future. Instead, the United States should embrace and expand upon the international character of scientific research, enabling and encouraging high-skilled immigration.  

Finally, we should focus on what’s most at risk: basic research, undertaken simply to understand, without immediate utility or answers. When basic science makes an impact, it’s transformative, creating entirely new sectors and jobs, expanding our lifespans and our health, restoring the planet, and bringing us closer to understanding how the universe operates. Historically, financing for basic research has largely been the purview of governments because the outcomes are far from commercializable. Charitable and for-profit private funders can step in, and, much like IBM, Bell Laboratories, and Xerox did in the last century, large, well-resourced companies have the ability and the business interest to fund earlier-stage explorations. 

It is possible that, in the long run, a reformation of the way we approach the endless frontier may benefit science and scientists—not to mention the rest of us. After all, as Vannevar Bush wrote, “without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.” 

The endless frontier—the infinite expanse of scientific knowledge, and the world it will allow us to create—is still out there.