KYIV, UKRAINE (AP) – Several senior Ukrainian officials, including front-line governors, lost their jobs on Tuesday in a corruption scandal plaguing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government as it grapples with the nearly 11-month-old Russian invasion.
Ukraine’s biggest government shake-up since the war began came as United States (US) officials said Washington was poised to approve supplying Kyiv with M1 Abrams tanks, with international reluctance eroding toward sending tanks to the battlefront against the Russians.
Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 on an anti-establishment and anti-corruption platform in a country long gripped by graft and the new allegations come as Western allies are channelling billions of dollars to help Kyiv fight against Moscow. Officials in several countries, including the US, have demanded more accountability for the aid, given Ukraine’s rampant corruption.
While Zelenskyy and his aides portray the resignations and firings as proof of their efforts to crack down, the wartime scandal could play into Moscow’s political attacks on the leadership in Kyiv. Local media said Deputy Defence Minister Viacheslav Shapovalov resigned, in connection with a scandal involving the purchase of food for Ukraine’s armed forces. Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Symonenko also quit. In all, four deputy ministers and five governors of front-line provinces were set to leave their posts, the country’s cabinet secretary said. Authorities did not announce any criminal charges. There was no immediate explanation.
The departures thinned government ranks already diminished by the deaths of the interior minister, who oversaw Ukraine’s police and emergency services, and others in the ministry’s leadership in a helicopter crash last week. Tymoshenko joined the presidential office in 2019 after working on Zelenskyy’s media strategy during his presidential campaign. He was under investigation in connection with his personal use of luxury cars and was among officials linked in September to the embezzlement of humanitarian aid worth more than USD7 million earmarked for the southern Zaporizhzhia region. He has denied the allegations. On Sunday, a deputy infrastructure minister, Vasyl Lozynsky, was fired for alleged participation in a network embezzling budget funds.
Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency detained him while he was receiving a USD400,000 bribe for helping to fix contracts for restoring facilities battered by Russian missile strikes, according to Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov.
He was put under house arrest, told to surrender his passport, ordered to wear a monitoring device and told not to communicate with witnesses.
In a video address on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said, “Any internal problems that hinder the state are being cleaned up and will be cleaned up. It is fair, it is necessary for our defence, and it helps our rapprochement with European institutions.”
Analysts said his message was that corruption won’t be tolerated.
