Kyiv: Ukraine’s top military commander said on Thursday he visited troops holding the front line in a key eastern city besieged by Russian forces, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy grappled with the fallout from a corruption scandal that has engulfed his administration.
After Zelenskyy’s justice and energy ministers quit on Wednesday amid the investigation into alleged energy sector graft, the government fired the vice president of Energoatom, the state-owned nuclear power company believed by investigators to be at the centre of the kickback scheme.
The heads of Energoatom’s finance, legal and procurement departments and a consultant to Energoatom’s president were also dismissed in the clear-out, Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko said late on Wednesday.
A Kyiv court has begun hearing evidence from anti-corruption watchdogs whose 15-month investigation, including 1,000 hours of wiretaps, has brought the detention of five people and implicated another seven in the scheme that allegedly earned about USD 100 million.
Tymur Mindich, a co-owner of Zelenskyy’s Kvartal 95 media production company, is the conspiracy’s suspected mastermind. His whereabouts are unknown.agencies