Several senior Ukrainian officials have resigned amid a government shakeup ordered by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
A key presidential adviser, the deputy defense minister and the deputy attorney general have left their posts on Tuesday.
Other senior officials may also leave their posts, Zelensky has announced, determined to clamp down on corruption.
Zelensky thus responds to a “key public demand“, and it is that justice should be applied to everyone, according to one of his main advisers, Mikhailo Podolyak.
This anti-corruption campaign comes after Ukrainian media reported that the country’s Defense Ministry paid inflated prices for food supplies to a relatively unknown company. Another minister was also arrested Monday on charges of receiving bribes.
Zelensky has already prohibited senior government officials from leaving the country unless it is on official state business.
the scandals
The first to resign on Tuesday was Kirilo Timoshenko, the deputy head of the president’s office, who oversaw regional politics and had previously worked on Zelensky’s election campaign.
Timoshenko has been implicated in a scandal related to the use of luxury vehicles.
Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last February, he has become a frequent spokesman for the government. In a Telegram post, Timoshenko thanked Zelensky for “the opportunity to do good deeds every day and every minute.”
Deputy Defense Minister Viacheslav Shopalov has also resigned after it was reported that he was in charge of overseeing the controversial agreement for the supply of food for the army. According to his department, it was a “technical error” in which no money had changed hands.
Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov himself has come under scrutiny for the same reason.
Deputy Prosecutor General Oleskiy Simonenko has also been removed from his post “according to his own wish,” his office announced.
adverse history
Corruption is not something new in Ukraine. In 2021, Transparency International ranked the country 122 out of 180 in its ranking of corrupt states.
Precisely, the strong hand against corruption is one of the key demands of the European Union (EU) if the country wants to advance in its application to join the bloc.
In a speech last Sunday, Zelensky promised that “will not return to the times beforeto the way in which some people close to state institutions used to live”.
The day before, Ukraine’s deputy infrastructure minister, Vasil Lozinskyi, was arrested on charges of accepting a bribe worth more than $350,000 for the supply of power generators. He has denied the charges.
David Arajamia, leader of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, has promised corrupt officials could end up in jail.
“Officials at all levels have been constantly warned through official and unofficial channels: Focus on the war, help the victims, cut red tape and stop doing dubious business. Many of them have listened, but some, unfortunately, have not, ”he said in a statement posted on Telegram.
“If (the warning) does not work in a civilized manner, it will be done in accordance with the laws of war. This applies both to the recent purchases of generators and to the new scandals in the Ministry of Defence”.
According to information in the Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, the heads of four regional administrations – Sumy, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – could be the next to follow Timoshenko, due to their links with the presidential adviser.
While there have been anti-corruption reforms in recent years, the stakes are high for Kyiv, which is receiving billions of dollars in financial aid from Western allies.
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