The Ukrainian president acted in response to a aggravating power struggle among key lieutenants of the country's 7-month-old Orange Revolution, as that stirred into serious infighting about alleged corruption among top officials.

Yushchenko explained his acting as an necessary effort to suppress the worst political crisis in his term.

Yuriy Yekhanurov, a former economics minister and regional governor, was appointed as acting prime minister

The mass dismissal should put an end to the large coalition that successfully led a popular revolt after deceitful last year's presidential elections
"I knew that there were definite conflicts between those people. ... I hoped that if each of them immersed himself in work, there would not be enough time for mutual intrigues, for PR and anti-PR campaigns between certain political forces of a single coalition," Yushchenko confessed after he has failed to impose unity on the Tymoshenko government and his own presidential administration. "I want people to feel that the government works in harmony ... [but] they lost the team spirit and faith."

The dismissal of the government was a reaction to a series of resignations by top officials who strongly believed that some of the most powerful people around Yushchenko were using their government positions to enrich themselves and spoiling one of the deepest promises of December's popular revolt: the eradication of endemic graft.