The Verkhovna Rada has supported the appointment of Ruslan Stefanchuk, who previously held the post of First Deputy Speaker, to the post of Chairman of the Parliament.

The corresponding decision was supported by 261 MPs at a plenary session on Thursday.

Before voting for Stefanchuk's candidacy for the post of speaker, deputies had held a rating vote, which was headed by Stefanchuk (257 votes in support), an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported.

MPs from the European Solidarity faction, who also ran for the post of speaker,Oleksiy Honcharenko and Yana Zinkevych, respectively, gained 44 and 146 votes in support.

As previously reported, five deputies applied for the post of chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, but Yaroslav Zhelezniak (Holos faction) and Geo Leros (non-factional) withdrew their candidatures on Thursday.

MPs of the Verkhovna Rada of the IX convocation elected Stefanchuk as the first deputy chairman of the parliament on August 29, 2019.

Stefanchuk was born in Ternopil on October 29, 1975. He graduated from the Khmelnytsky Institute of Regional Management and Law and the Podillia Technological University (now the Khmelnytsky National University). He is Doctor of Law, Professor; corresponding member of the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine, Honored Worker of Science and Technology of Ukraine. He was engaged in advocacy. During the 2019 presidential campaign, he oversaw the work of expert groups. Since 2019, he has been working as advisor to President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, presidential representative in the Verkhovna Rada.

The Verkhovna Rada recalled Dmytro Razumkov from the post of chairman of the parliament on October 7. From May to November 2019, Razumkov headed the Servant of the People political party, he was the first number on the list in the early parliamentary elections in 2019. He held the post of speaker of the Ukrainian parliament since August 29, 2019.

A source of the Interfax-Ukraine agency reported that the Servant of the People parliamentary faction was considering Stefanchuk as the only candidate for the post of speaker of parliament in the event of Razumkov's resignation from this post, and the post of first deputy speaker, in turn, may now be taken by the first deputy head of the faction Servant of the People in the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Korniyenko.

On October 7, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released Stefanchuk from the duties of his representative in the Ukrainian parliament.