Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – A high-level reshuffle in Ukraine’s government cost nearly a dozen senior officials their jobs on Tuesday as the country’s president sought to root out entrenched corruption while leading the fight against the Russian invasion.
The crackdown came as Poland formally asked Germany for permission to transfer a modest number of its Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine. Germany builds the high-tech armor and Warsaw needs Berlin’s permission to send it to a non-NATO country.
In Kyiv, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office has resigned after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pledged to tackle high-level corruption allegations – including some related to certain wartime spending – that have embarrassed authorities and hurt the country’s efforts to join the European Union and to NATO could slow down.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko asked to be relieved of his duties, according to an online copy of a decree signed by Zelenskyy and Tymoshenko’s own social media posts. Neither gave a reason for the resignation.
Deputy Defense Minister Viacheslav Shapovalov also resigned, local media reported, claiming his resignation was linked to a scandal involving the purchase of food for Ukraine’s armed forces. Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Symonenko also resigned.
In total, four deputy ministers and five regional governors would step down, the country’s cabinet secretary said on the Telegram messaging app.
The departures thinned the ranks of the wartime government, as Zelenskyy had already lost his interior minister, who oversaw Ukraine’s police and emergency services, and the rest of the ministry’s leadership in a helicopter crash last week.
With Western allies channeling billions of dollars into Kiev’s fight against Moscow, Zelenskyy had pledged to root out corruption, which some observers have described as endemic. Zelenskyy came to power in 2019 on an anti-establishment and anti-corruption platform.
Tymoshenko entered the presidency in 2019 after working on Zelenskyy’s media and creative content strategy during his presidential campaign.
In his late night video address on Sunday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s focus on the Russian invasion would not stop his government from cracking down on suspected corruption, even in the midst of a war.
“I want to make it clear: There will be no going back to what used to be,” Zelenskyy said.
Tymoshenko was under investigation last year for his personal use of luxury cars. He was also among officials linked to the embezzlement of more than $7 million worth of humanitarian aid destined for the southern region last September by an investigator working with Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau Zaporizhia was determined. He has denied all allegations.
On Sunday, a deputy minister at the Ministry of Infrastructure, Vasyl Lozynsky, was fired for being part of a network allegedly embezzling budget funds.
Oleksandr Kubrakov, the infrastructure minister, said Lozynsky was relieved of his duties after Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency detained him while receiving $400,000 in bribes for helping to secure contracts related to the restoration of facilities close that were hit by Russian missile attacks.
Last June, the EU agreed to put Ukraine on the path to EU membership. To join the bloc, countries must meet a detailed set of economic and political conditions, including a commitment to the rule of law and other democratic principles.
Ukraine has also long aspired to join NATO, but the military alliance will not extend an invitation due to the country’s contested borders, defense deficiencies and, in part, corruption.
Meanwhile, the delivery of an expected 14 Leopard tanks from Poland seemed a foregone conclusion, with the main open question being when that will happen.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Sunday that Berlin would not try to prevent Poland from delivering the versatile tanks to Kyiv if it asks, and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Tuesday that the Poles – and other Western Allies, whom he did not identify – Ukrainian soldiers are already training on the leopard in Poland.
German officials confirmed receipt of the Polish application to the dpa news agency and said it was being examined “with due urgency”.
Poland is a leading supporter in the EU for providing military aid to help Ukraine prevail 11 months after Kremlin forces invaded. Although Germany has become one of Ukraine’s main arms suppliers, other Western allies – notably Poland and the Baltic countries on NATO’s eastern flank, which feel particularly threatened by Russia – have shown impatience at Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s perceived slowness.
Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak called on Germany to “join the coalition of countries supporting Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks” – a reference to recent pressure on Berlin to send some of its own tanks. Despite requests from Ukraine, Germany hesitated to take this step.
“This is our common cause, because it’s about the security of all of Europe!” Blaszczak tweeted.
Morawiecki aimed another political broadside at Berlin.
“I hope that the answer from the German side will come quickly this time, because the Germans linger, dodge, act in a way that is difficult to understand,” said Morawiecki.
He claimed that Germany was unwilling to defend Ukraine more comprehensively and speculated why that might be: “Do they mean fear, some not entirely understandable fear, or a belief that a return to normal relations with Russia is possible?”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called for the rapid delivery of new weapons to Ukraine, where a broad battlefield deadlock is expected to give way to new offensives in the spring.
“At this crucial moment in the war, we must provide Ukraine with heavier and more advanced systems, and faster,” Stoltenberg said on Tuesday after talks with German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius in Berlin.
Polish officials have indicated that Finland and Denmark are ready to join Warsaw and send Leopards to Ukraine. Poland wants to send a 14-man company of the tanks, but these would make little impression in a war involving thousands of tanks. If other countries contribute, Warsaw calculates, the Panzer Command could grow in size.
For other developments:
The Presidential Office of Ukraine said Tuesday that at least five civilians have been killed and seven others injured in Ukraine in the past 24 hours. A Russian missile hit a school in eastern Ukraine, killing one person, Donetsk region governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
Russian forces also shelled nine towns and villages in the northern Sumy region bordering Russia, hitting a house killing a young woman and wounding three other people, local governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyy reported on Telegram.
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