After amendments to the Ukrainian constitution aimed at decentralizing the governance system take effect, Ukraine will hold new local elections, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk said.

"After the constitutional amendments take effect, we will hold elections for local self-government bodies again, because these constitutional amendments invest territorial communities with absolutely different powers," Yatseniuk said at a board meeting of the Regional Development, Construction, and Utilities Ministry on Thursday.

The Ukrainian authorities should prepare for switching to a new governance system within the next two years, he said.

Local government bodies will play a significantly greater role than the central ones for ordinary people in the new governance system, Yatseniuk said. "They [the people] will have to remember the president's name, will hardly recall the prime minister's name, and certainly won't know the government ministers' names. But what name they should know is that of their mayor, the head of their executive body, and their local deputy, who, once getting the mandate, would bear responsibility to the concrete people who came to polling stations and cast their ballots," he said.

The central government will be responsible for national security and defense, the law enforcement and judicial systems, and foreign policy, Yatseniuk said.