Kyiv, Ukraine: Several senior Ukrainian officials resigned on Tuesday in the biggest leadership shakeup of the war with Russia so far, in what an aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky called an answer to public calls for “justice”.
Some, though not all, of the resignations were linked with corruption allegations. Ukraine has a history of graft and shaky governance, and is under international pressure to show it can be a reliable steward of billions of dollars in Western aid.
“There are already personnel decisions – some today, some tomorrow – regarding officials at various levels in ministries and other central government structures, as well as in the regions and in law enforcement,” Zelensky said in an overnight video address.
Zelensky aide Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted: “The president sees and hears society. And he directly responds to a key public demand – justice for all.”
Among those stepping down or fired on Tuesday morning were a deputy prosecutor general, a deputy defence minister and the deputy chief of staff in Zelensky’s own office.
The changes came two days after a deputy infrastructure minister was arrested and accused of siphoning off $400,000 from contracts to buy generators, one of the first big corruption scandals to become public since the war began 11 months ago.
The Defence Ministry said Deputy Defence Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, responsible for supplying troops, had resigned on Tuesday morning as a “worthy deed” to retain trust, after media accusations of corruption which he and the ministry rejected. It followed a newspaper report that the ministry overpaid for food for troops, which the ministry and its supplier both denied.
The prosecutor’s office announced that Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Symonenko had been removed from office, giving no reason. Symonenko had been under fire in Ukrainian media for taking a holiday in Spain.
Though Zelensky did not name any officials in his address, he announced a ban on officials taking holidays abroad.
“Ignoring the war is a luxury no one can afford,” he said. “If they want to rest, they will rest outside the civil service.”
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy chief of staff in Zelenskiy’s office, announced his own resignation, also citing no reason. He had helped run the president’s 2019 election campaign and more recently had a role in overseeing regional policy.
The changes are a rare shakeup of an otherwise notably stable wartime leadership in Kyiv. Apart from purging a spy agency in July, Zelensky has mostly stuck with his team, built around fellow political novices the former television actor brought into power when he was elected in a landslide in 2019 promising to root out a corrupt political class.
Kyiv says a surge in patriotic feeling has dampened corruption since Russia’s invasion. But the head of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party promised on Monday that officials would be arrested in a coming anti-corruption drive, which would resort to martial law if necessary.
