The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said on Tuesday he had asked President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday to relieve him of his duties as part of a wave of government resignations and dismissals. The move comes amid a corruption scandal which saw Infrastructure deputy Vasyl Lozinskyi sacked and detained for an alleged theft of $400,000 from the winter aid budget. Tymoshenko, 33, had been the deputy head of presidential office since 2019, overseeing regions and regional policies. He also worked with Zelenskiy during his election campaign, overseeing media and creative content.
Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, responsible for supplying troops with food and equipment, has also resigned, citing “media accusations” of corruption that he and the ministry say are baseless. A statement on the defence ministry’s website said Shapovalov’s resignation was “a worthy deed” that would help retain trust in the ministry
Deputy prosecutor general Oleksiy Symonenko has been removed from his post, according to the prosecutor general’s office, and two deputy ministers resigned from Ukraine’s ministry of communities and territories Development – Vyacheslav Negoda and Ivan Lukerya. Reportedly the heads of five regional authorities have also been dismissed, in Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhya, Kyiv, Sumy and Kherson.
Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, has said today’s personnel shakeup showed Zelenskiy was reacting to a “key public demand” that justice should apply to everyone. “Zelenskiy’s personnel decisions testify to the key priorities of the state. The president sees and hears society. And he directly responds to a key public demand – justice for all”.
Zelenskiy had said on Monday that changes would be announced imminently in the government, the regions and in the security forces after allegations of corruption nearly a year into Russia’s invasion.
Germany has now received Poland’s official request to re-export Leopard tanks to Ukraine, Polish defence minister Mariusz Blaszczak said.
The final decision on whether Germany will give permission will be taken at the chancellery in Berlin, a senior official at the foreign ministry said on Tuesday. “At the end of the day, the decision will obviously be taken at the chancellery, in consensus by the government,” Tobias Lindner, state secretary at the foreign ministry, said at a defence conference in Berlin.
Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg is confident the alliance will find a solution soon, he said after meeting Germany’s defence minister on Tuesday. “At this pivotal moment in the war, we must provide heavier and more advanced systems to Ukraine, and we must do it faster,” Stoltenberg said.
New German defence minister Boris Pistorius said there was no disunity among allies about sending heavy battle tanks to Ukraine and said that Berlin would act quickly if there was a positive decision to do so. However, he stressed that Nato must not become a party to the war in Ukraine.
German defence group Rheinmetall could deliver 139 Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine if required, a spokesperson for the company told media group RND on Monday.
The Kremlin warned Monday that the people of Ukraine will “pay the price” if the west decides to send tanks to support Kyiv. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the splits in Europe over whether to provide tanks to Kyiv showed there was increasing “nervousness” within the Nato alliance. Peskov also dismissed Washington’s announcement that it was planning to impose sanctions on the Russian private mercenary Wagner Group.
Finland’s foreign minister Pekka Haavisto has signalled a possible pause in discussions with Turkey over Finnish ambitions to join Nato alongside Sweden, which he says is due to the pressure of Turkey’s forthcoming election.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, outlined the EU’s new military aid package to Ukraine worth €500m, after the bloc’s 27 foreign ministers met in Brussels on Monday. The package was approved along with a further €45m for the EU’s military training mission for Ukraine. Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, said his country would not block the EU move.
Russia’s ambassador to Estonia, Vladimir Lipaev, has accused the west of arming the Baltic state with weapons that could strike at St Petersburg.
Russian forces continue to “endure operational deadlock and heavy casualties”, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. An MoD intelligence update on Monday also said new disciplinary measures introduced by Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of the general staff and newly appointed commander in Ukraine, had been met with “sceptical feedback”, in particular in response to the decision to ban soldiers from wearing beards.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has said Moscow was willing to negotiate with Ukraine in the early months of the war but the US and other western nations advised Kyiv against it. Lavrov was speaking during his visit to South Africa on Monday, where he met with the foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, a month before the South African military is set to host a joint military exercise with Russia and China on its east coast. On Tuesday Lavrov visited Eswatini.
Germany began Monday to move its Patriot air defence systems into Polish territory, close to the Ukrainian border, where they will be deployed to prevent stray missile strikes. Berlin’s offer to deploy three of its Patriot units in Poland came after two men were killed by a stray Ukrainian missile that struck the Polish village of Przewodow in November.
Andrey Medvedev, a former commander of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group who recently fled to Norway, has been apprehended by police, he told the Guardian on Monday. Medvedev’s Norwegian lawyer, Brynjulf Risnes, said that the police decided to apprehend Medvedev on Sunday evening after a “strong disagreement” with the former Wagner soldier over living conditions at the safe house where he had been living since he arrived in Norway.
