Ukraine parliament votes to appoint presidential ally as new prosecutor general

KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday voted to appoint Iryna Venediktova, a 41-year-old lawyer and close ally of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as the country's new Prosecutor General.

Venediktova was a lawmaker in Zelenskiy's Servant of the People party and the acting head of the state investigation bureau. Her predecessor Ruslan Ryaboshapka was sacked earlier in March in a sweeping reshuffle that raised questions about the country's reform momentum.

Ryaboshapka was also in the spotlight last year as the man to decide whether to launch an investigation into former U.S. vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, in what became a key issue in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; editing by Matthias Williams)