Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko on Monday to lead a new government, setting the stage for a political reshuffle as Ukraine’s war with Russia raged on, Reuters reported.

Zelenskiy also proposed that Ukraine’s current prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, take over as defence minister, describing him as holding the right qualifications for a very important job.

The nominations, which require parliamentary approval, came as diplomatic efforts to end the war, now in its fourth year, have stalled and as Ukraine seeks to revive its cash-strapped economy and build up a domestic arms industry.

“We … discussed concrete measures to boost Ukraine’s economic potential, expand support programs for Ukrainians, and scale up our domestic weapons production,” Zelenskiy wrote on X.

“In pursuit of this goal, we are initiating a transformation of the executive branch in Ukraine,” he said, adding that he had proposed that Svyrydenko lead the government and “significantly renew its work”.

Svyrydenko, 39, is an economist and has served as first deputy prime minister since 2021. She played a key role in recent negotiations for a minerals deal with the United States, read the report.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy praised Shmyhal’s “vast experience” as very “valuable in the position of minister of defence of Ukraine.”

“This is precisely the area where the country’s maximum resources, maximum tasks and a great deal of responsibility are currently concentrated,” he said.

Shmyhal has served as prime minister since March 2020, making him the longest-serving head of government since the country gained its independence from Moscow in 1991 amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.

He would replace Rustem Umerov, who Zelenskiy suggested last week could be named Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington.

Ukraine relies on financial aid from its Western allies to finance social and humanitarian spending as the bulk of state revenues go to fund the army and domestic weapons production, Reuters reported.

Ukrainian officials have also urged Kyiv’s partners to help finance the country’s arms industry, including through joint defence projects.

In his address, Zelenskiy said Ukraine would continue to “boost production of its own weapons and develop its own defence projects — our own Ukrainian and jointly with our partners”.

Writing on X, Svyrydenko said she would pursue deregulation, cut back bureaucracy, protect business and reduce non-critical expenditure to achieve the “full concentration of state resources” for defence and post-war recovery.

“The state apparatus has no right to waste the resources and potential of our country,” she said. “Ukraine deserves to be among the strongest economies in Europe.”

At least eight Palestinians, most of them children, were killed and more than a dozen were wounded in central Gaza when they went to collect water on Sunday, local officials said, in an Israeli strike which the military said missed its target, Reuters reported.

The Israeli military said the missile had intended to hit an Islamic Jihad militant in the area but that a malfunction had caused it to fall “dozens of metres from the target”.

“The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians,” it said in a statement, adding that the incident was under review.

The strike hit a water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp, killing six children and injuring 17 others, said Ahmed Abu Saifan, an emergency physician at Al-Awda Hospital.

Water shortages in Gaza have worsened sharply in recent weeks, with fuel shortages causing desalination and sanitation facilities to close, making people dependent on collection centres where they can fill up their plastic containers.

Hours later, 12 people were killed by an Israeli strike on a market in Gaza City, including a prominent hospital consultant, Ahmad Qandil, Palestinian media reported. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attack.

Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday that more than 58,000 people had been killed since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, with 139 people added to the death toll over the past 24 hours, read the report.

The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its tally, but says over half of those killed are women and children.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said on Sunday that he was “hopeful” on Gaza ceasefire negotiations underway in Qatar.

He told reporters in Teterboro, New Jersey, that he planned to meet senior Qatari officials on the sidelines of the FIFA Club World Cup final.

However, negotiations aimed at securing a ceasefire have been stalling, with the two sides divided over the extent of an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave, Palestinian and Israeli sources said at the weekend.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to convene ministers late on Sunday to discuss the latest developments in the talks, an Israeli official said.

The indirect talks over a U.S. proposal for a 60-day ceasefire are being held in Doha, but optimism that surfaced last week of a looming deal has largely faded, with both sides accusing each other of intransigence, Reuters reported.

Netanyahu in a video he posted on Telegram on Sunday said Israel would not back down from its core demands – releasing all the hostages still in Gaza, destroying Hamas and ensuring Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel.

The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages into Gaza. At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages there are believed to still be alive.

Families of hostages gathered outside Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem to call for a deal.

“The overwhelming majority of the people of Israel have spoken loudly and clearly. We want to do a deal, even at the cost of ending this war, and we want to do it now,” said Jon Polin, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was held hostage by Hamas in a Gaza tunnel and slain by his captors in August 2024.

Netanyahu and his ministers were also set to discuss a plan on Sunday to move hundreds of thousands of Gazans to the southern area of Rafah, in what Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has described as a new “humanitarian city” but which would be likely to draw international criticism for forced displacement.

An Israeli source briefed on discussions in Israel said that the plan was to establish the complex in Rafah during the ceasefire, if it is reached.

On Saturday, a Palestinian source familiar with the truce talks said that Hamas rejected withdrawal maps which Israel proposed, because they would leave around 40% of the territory under Israeli control, including all of Rafah.

Israel’s campaign against Hamas has displaced almost the entire population of more than 2 million people, but Gazans say nowhere is safe in the coastal enclave, read the report.

Early on Sunday morning, a missile hit a house in Gaza City where a family had moved after receiving an evacuation order from their home in the southern outskirts.

“My aunt, her husband and the children, are gone. What is the fault of the children who died in an ugly bloody massacre at dawn?” said Anas Matar, standing in the rubble of the building.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told Russia’s top diplomat his country was ready to “unconditionally support” all actions taken by Moscow to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, state media reported on Sunday, as the two countries held high-level strategic talks, Reuters reported.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is on a three-day visit to North Korea, which has provided troops and arms for Russia’s war with Ukraine and pledged more military support as Moscow tries to make advances in the conflict.

Kim met Lavrov in the eastern coastal city of Wonsan where the two countries’ foreign ministers held their second strategic dialogue, pledging further cooperation under a partnership treaty signed last year that includes a mutual defense pact.

Kim told Lavrov the steps taken by the allies in response to radically evolving global geopolitics will contribute greatly to securing peace and security around the world, North Korea’s state news agency KCNA reported.

“Kim Jong Un reaffirmed the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is ready to unconditionally support and encourage all the measures taken by the Russian leadership as regards the tackling of the root cause of the Ukrainian crisis,” KCNA said.

Lavrov earlier held talks with his North Korean counterpart Choe Son Hui in Wonsan, and they issued a joint statement pledging support to safeguard the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of each other’s country, KCNA said.

On Saturday, Russian media reported Lavrov described the two countries’ ties as “an invincible fighting brotherhood” in his meeting with Kim and thanked him for the troops deployed to Russia, read the report.

Relations between Russia and North Korea have deepened dramatically during the last two years of the war in Ukraine, which started in February 2022, with Pyongyang deploying more than 10,000 troops and arms to Russia to back Moscow’s military campaign.

Kim’s government has pledged to send about 6,000 military engineers and builders to help reconstruction work in Russia’s Kursk region.