It is not an easy time to be Ukraine's finance minister. The country – which has been locked in conflict with Russia in its eastern regions since March 2014 – has a significant gap in its finances and is suffering from economic difficulties. Indeed, stability in Ukraine is reliant on the Minsk II agreement being honoured, which was signed in Belarus in February 2015 and agrees a ceasefire in the Ukrainian conflict zones.
Faced with these struggles, US-born Natalie Jaresko was asked to join Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko's government as finance minister in November 2014. Ms Jaresko, who is ethnically Ukrainian and has lived in the country since the collapse of the Soviet Union, was sworn in as finance minister in December 2014, as one of three foreign-born ministers, alongside Lithuanian-born economic development and trade minister Aivaras Abromavicius and Georgian-born health minister Aleksandre Kvitashvili – all of whom received Ukrainian passports as a result.
