Kyiv on Tuesday announced the sacking of a dozen top officials in its biggest political blow since the country’s first major corruption scandal linked to the Russian invasion.
Ukraine has long suffered from endemic corruption, but government efforts to root out corruption have been hampered by nearly a year of full-scale warfare against Moscow.
Western allies, who have allocated billions of dollars of financial and military aid to Kyiv to counter Russian troops, have often made such support a precondition on anti-corruption reforms.
Presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak said President Volodymyr Zelensky had focused on “key priorities of the state” in sacking officials, including governors of regions that have seen heavy fighting and deputy cabinet ministers.
Podolić tweeted, “Everyone should understand their responsibility during the war.”
“The president sees and hears the society.”
The shakeup came after Vasyl Lozinsky, a Ukrainian deputy minister for the development of communities and regions, was sacked over the weekend after his arrest on suspicion of embezzlement.
Photos released by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau show cash seized in Lozinsky’s office.
The 36-year-old was accused of accepting a $400,000 bribe to “facilitate” the purchase of generators at inflated prices. ukraine The country is grappling with power shortages following Russian attacks on the energy grid.
‘good deeds’
On Tuesday, the president’s key aide Kirilo Tymoshenko, who has worked with Zelensky since the 2019 election, announced his resignation.
The 33-year-old posted a photo of herself with her handwritten resignation letter, thanking the president for “the opportunity to do good work every day and every minute.”
Tymoshenko was implicated in several scandals, including the alleged personal use last October of an SUV donated to Ukraine for humanitarian purposes.
Oleg Nemchinov, a senior government official, also announced the departure of five regional governors and four deputy ministers.
These include the heads of the central Dnipropetrovsk region, the northeastern Sumy region, the southern regions of Zaporizhia and Kherson, as well as the region around the capital Kyiv.
Nemchinov additionally announced the dismissal of two deputy ministers of the development of communities and regions and one deputy minister of social policy.
The Defense Ministry separately announced the resignation of Deputy Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, who oversaw the army’s logistical support.
This came after the ministry was accused of signing food contracts at prices two to three times higher than the existing rates for basic food items.
spain holiday
The ministry stressed that the allegations were “baseless and unfounded”, but said that Shapovalov’s departure would “preserve the trust of society and international partners”.
Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Simonenko also resigned, following media reports that he holidayed in Spain, allegedly using the car of a Ukrainian businessman.
In his evening address on Monday, Zelensky announced an upcoming “personnel decision” and said he was banning officials from traveling abroad unless related to work.
“If they want to rest now, they will rest outside the civil service,” Zelensky said.
Despite being vocal about fighting corruption, Zelensky himself has been embroiled in corruption scandals in the past.
In 2021, the so-called Pandora Papers, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, stated that Zelensky used a network of offshore companies to buy three upmarket properties in London.
His office said at the time that Zelensky, who is a former actor and comedian, created offshore companies to protect himself against the “aggressive actions” of then-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych’s “corrupt” regime.
Transparency International has ranked Ukraine 122nd out of 180 in its 2021 corruption ranking.
According to the Center for Economic Strategy, a Ukrainian think-tank, the total amount of Western military and financial aid to Kyiv could total $100 billion this year, including more than $40 billion for its armed forces.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)