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LAST UPDATE | 24 Jan 2023
A HIGH-LEVEL shake-up in the Ukrainian government has cost nearly a dozen senior officials their jobs as the president seeks to root out entrenched corruption while conducting the fight against Russia’s invasion.
The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office quit after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pledged to address high-level corruption allegations — including some related to specific wartime spending — that have embarrassed authorities and could slow the country’s bids to join the European Union and Nato.
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 defence minister Viacheslav Shapovalov also resigned, local media reported, alleging his departure was linked to a scandal involving the purchase of food for the Ukrainian armed forces. Deputy prosecutor general Oleksiy Symonenko quit as well.
In all, four deputy ministers and five regional governors were set to leave their posts, the country’s cabinet secretary said.
The departures thinned the government’s wartime ranks 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 channelling billions of pounds to help Kyiv’s fight against Moscow, Mr Zelensky had pledged to weed out corruption which some observers have described as endemic. He came to power in 2019 on an anti-establishment and anti-corruption platform.
Tymoshenko joined the presidential office in 2019 after working on Zelenskyy’s media and creative content strategy during his presidential campaign.
In his nightly video address on Sunday, the president said Ukraine’s focus on the Russian invasion would not stop his government from tackling alleged corruption, even amid a war.
“I want to be clear: there will be no return to what used to be in the past,” he said.
Tymoshenko was last year under investigation relating to his personal use of luxury cars. He was also among officials linked last September by an investigator working with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to the embezzlement of humanitarian aid worth more than $7 million (over €6.4 million) earmarked for the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
He has denied all the allegations.
On Sunday, a deputy minister at the infrastructure ministry, Vasyl Lozynsky, was dismissed for being part of a network allegedly embezzling budget funds.
Oleksandr Kubrakov, the infrastructure minister, said Mr Lozynsky was relieved of his duties after Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency detained him while he was receiving a $400,000 (about €368,000) bribe for helping to fix contracts related to restoring facilities battered by Russian missile strikes.
Last June, the EU agreed to put Ukraine on a path toward EU membership. To join the bloc, countries must meet a host of economic and political conditions, including a commitment to the rule of law and other democratic principles.
Ukraine has long aspired to join Nato as well, but the military alliance is not about to offer an invitation because of the country’s contested borders, defence establishment shortcomings and, in part, its corruption issues.
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If politicians and their children actually fought on the front lines in wars, they would not be so eager to start them. A small group of people are and will make an absolute fortune out of this war, as is always the case.
In regard to politicians and corruption, nothing new really, happens even in the best of democracies, difference is how they are dealt with.
In some countries, politicians are sacked, resign and in some cases, even shot. A bit drastic one has to admit. In others, the politicians investigate themselves and do absolutely nothing.
The fighting, dying and suffering is usually left to the poor and middle classes while the generals get the medals. We as a race, just never learn.
@George Vladisavljevic: corruption in standard times is one thing .. corruption while your country is at war should be treason. No different than an oligarch that the Ukrainians hate so much..
@Ciaran: I agree, there should be the death penalty for corruption after your country is invaded.
@George Vladisavljevic: Has any of Putin’s cronies been sacked or resigned over corruption? General Sergi Shougu perhaps? Who owns an $18 million dacha on a $100,000 state salary. No?
https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-dm-shoigu-accused-owning-mansion/27330203.html
@David Jordan: Putun normally arranges for them to be “resigned”. Shocking amount of lads falling out windows lately. Heard another great example of a guy that apparently committed suicide by shooting himself in the head – twice!!
@David Jordan: Ah go back to counting your shares in Krauss-Maffei Wegmann will ya!
@David Jordan: No the same old, same old in Russia and corruption. Don’t think it will be changing any time soon.
Ukraine has an added problem of watched by donor nations, and being held to account for funds donated by the international community, not ending up in the pockets of corrupt leaders and politicians. Something like missing millions in Iraq and Afghanistan. How does that go again? “Absolute power corrupts..”
I think Zelensky should quit !
@Eugene Kelly: When he is no longer useful to his masters, no doubt he will.
@Eugene Kelly: Kinda ironic that one of the reason Russia invaded Ukraine is over the fear that … Ukraine’s move towards the West, the EU, better democracy and a reduction in corruption, required for EU membership, might give Russian citizens notions.
@David Jordan: Totally agree that as a rule, as a pre-requisite to join the EU, one has to reduce the corruption within the country, but one has to wonder how some recent additions, which I will not mention for the fear of being mauled, were allowed to join, or those that are being considered as possible future candidates.
Sadly corruption is rife, and is considered acceptable in doing business in some parts of Europe and most of the world.
I don’t think that all this is about corruption. Zelensky has had years to deal with corruption. This is a purge. The CIA director visits Zelensky and a week later all hell breaks loose. We will find out what is really going on eventually.
Russia…..please stay in your own country ,or,isn’t it big enough for you?.
@Bookworms Dublin: Kyiv is the birthplace of Russia. The first Russian state called Kievan Rus was established in Kiev 12 centuries ago. Even the name of Russia originated in the name of this loose confederation of Eastern Slavic, Baltic and Finnic nations.
@cathalsurfs: I think it’s a little more complicated than that. But hey, who cares lol
@cathalsurfs: “Kyiv is the birthplace of Russia.”
True.
However, this is used by Putin and other racist Russians (known as Ruscism) to argue that Ukrainian national identity is illegitimate and Ukrainian language does not exist, it’s just a “dialect of Russian” or made up, and that Ukrainians are deluded “Little Russians” fooled into thinking that they have Ukrainian ethnicity by 1920s Bolsheviks who promoted Ukrainization.
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/ukrainian-language-was-artificially-created-by-the-soviet-union
The promotion of Ukrainian culture and language (Ukrainization) ended under Stalin, who first instigated agricultural collectivisation that caused the Holodomor, a famine that killed 6.5 to 5 million Ukrainians, followed up by Stain’s 1933 telegram ending Ukrainization.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23611467?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
This is why Russian propaganda often claims e.g. the Ukrainian language does not exist, it’s just a dialect of Russian or it’s an artificial language invented by the early Soviet Union, and that Ukraine should not exist as a separate country.
@David Jordan: True you say, because you can’t twist the truth. However, that doesn’t stop folks going off on a tangent in order to pull the old racism card, no less. Better send them tanks you’re all for and about.. while in the next breath you’re concerned about the mass destruction of human lives (Holodomor). Nice one.
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