Ukrainian premier resigns following media leak

MOSCOW

Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk announced his resignation on Friday, following a media leak, claiming he criticized the country's President Volodymyr Zelensky.

On Thursday, Ukrainian media published an audio recording, where people with the voices similar to those of the prime minister and some other ministers are castigating Zelensky as incompetent in economic issues.

"I came to the post to fulfill the president's program. For me, he is a model of openness and decency. However, to put aside any doubts about our respect and trust in the president, I wrote a letter of resignation and handed it to the president with the right to submit it to the parliament," Honcharuk wrote in a post on Facebook.

The president's press office confirmed the receipt of the resignation letter in a statement, adding the head of state will announce his decision later.

On an audio recording, a man's voice, similar to Honcharuk's, was saying Zelensky has "a very primitive understanding of the economic processes" and then confessed that he is not competent in this area as well, as he is a lawyer but not an economist.

The press service of the Ukrainian government said it had no data about the authenticity of the recording and confirmed the premier's resignation.