Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suspended the country’s top prosecutor and the head of state security, saying more than 60 of their employees were working against Ukraine in Russian-occupied territory.
Key points:
- Mr Zelenskyy says members of the officials’ agencies had been collaborating with Russia
- He says hundreds of treason and collaboration cases have been opened against officials
- The sackings came as Russian missiles hit industrial facilities in a strategic city in southern Ukraine
Orders dissmissing domestic security chief Ivan Bakanov, a childhood friend of Mr Zelenskyy, and prosecutor-general Iryna Venediktova, who leads the effort to prosecute Russian war crimes in Ukraine, were published on the President’s official website.
In a separate Telegram post, Mr Zelenskyy earlier said he fired the top officials because many cases had come to light of members of their agencies collaborating with Russia.
He said 651 treason and collaboration cases had been opened against prosecutorial and law-enforcement officials, and more than 60 officials from Mr Bakanov and Ms Venediktova’s agencies were now working against Ukraine in Russian-occupied territories.
“Such an array of crimes against the foundations of the national security of the state … pose very serious questions to the relevant leaders,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
“Each of these questions will receive a proper answer.”
However, presidential office deputy head Andriy Smyrnov later clarified on Ukrainian television that Ms Venediktova had been suspended and Mr Bakanov had been “temporarily removed from fulfilling his duties” while “checks and investigations” are carried out.
Asked whether the two officials could return to their jobs if the investigations exonerate them, he said: “We live in a law-abiding country and, of course, I can conceive of [the possibility of] this.”
Mr Zelenskyy appointed Oleksiy Symonenko as the new prosecutor-general.
Journalist detained in Moscow
A Russian journalist who publicly protested the invasion of Ukraine has announced she was briefly detained in Moscow on Sunday.
Marine Ovsyannikova gained global attention in March when she disrupted a news bulletin on Russian state TV, her then employer, to protest the war. At the time she was fined for flouting protest laws.
She has since continued to protest on social media.
“Marina has been detained,” a post on her Telegram channel said on Sunday, alongside photos of two police officers leading her towards a white van.
Shortly after, she posted photos of herself and her dogs to Facebook.
“Went for a walk with the dogs, just stepped outside the gate, people in uniform approached me,” she wrote.
“Now I’m sitting in Krasnoselsky ministry of internal affairs,” she added, referring to a police station in Moscow.
Three hours later, she said she had been released.
“I’m home. Everything is OK,” she wrote on Facebook.
“But now I know it’s always best to bring a suitcase and passport if you go out.”
The Sunday arrest followed her July 15 social media posts, where she was seen with a poster calling Vladimir Putin a murderer and his soldiers fascists.
“How many more children must die before you will stop?” the poster read.
Russia hits industrial sites
The sackings came on Sunday as Russian missiles hit industrial facilities at a strategic city in southern Ukraine.
Moscow also pressed efforts to expand its gains in the country’s east.
Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said the missiles struck an industrial and infrastructure facility in the city, a key shipbuilding centre in the estuary of the Southern Bug river.Deadly Russian strikes focus on south-eastern UkraineRussian missile strikes in Ukraine’s southern city of Mykolaiv have killed at least five people, Ukrainian authorities say, in the latest series of artillery barrages across the country that left at least 10 dead and nearly 20 wounded.Read more
It is not yet known if there were any casualties.
Mykolaiv has faced regular Russian missile strikes in recent weeks as Moscow has sought to soften Ukrainian defences.
The Russian military has declared a goal to cut off Ukraine’s entire Black Sea coast all the way to the Romanian border.
If successful, such an effort would deal a crushing blow to the Ukrainian economy and trade, and allow Moscow to secure a land bridge to Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria, which hosts a Russian military base.
Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday that Russian missiles destroyed a depot for anti-ship Harpoon missiles delivered to Ukraine by NATO allies, a claim that could not be independently confirmed.
The Russians, fearing a Ukrainian counteroffensive, also sought to reinforce their positions in the Kherson region near Crimea and in part of the northern Zaporizhzhia region that they seized in the opening stage of the war.
The British Defence Ministry on Sunday said Russia was moving troops and equipment between Kherson, Mariupol and Zaporizhzhia, and increasing security measures around Melitopol.
The Russian military has so far focused on trying to take control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas, where the most capable and well-equipped Ukrainian forces are located.
Ukraine authorities have said their forces still retain control of two small villages in Luhansk, one of the two provinces that make up the Donbas, and are successfully fending off Russian attempts to advance deeper into the second one, Donetsk.
The Ukrainian military’s General Staff on Sunday said Ukrainian troops thwarted Russian attempts to advance toward Sloviansk, the key Ukrainian stronghold in Donetsk, and other attacks elsewhere in the region.
Yet, Russian officials have urged their troops to produce even more territorial gains.
Russia warns of ‘Doomsday’
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, responded to Ukrainian officials’ statements that Kyiv may strike the bridge linking Crimea and Russia, warning that that would trigger devastating consequences for the Ukrainian leadership.
“If that happens, the consequences will be obvious: They will momentarily face Doomsday,” Medvedev said on Sunday.
“It would be very hard for them to hide.”
Mr Medvedev said Russia would press its action in Ukraine until fulfilling its stated goal of “demilitarising” the country.
He predicted that the continuing fighting would “undoubtedly lead to the collapse of the existing regime” in Kyiv.
While focusing on the Donbas, the Russians have hit areas all across the country with missile strikes.
Mr Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians not to fall for Russia’s attempts to scare them with warnings of horrendous missile attacks to come, which he said were aimed at dividing Ukrainian society.
“It’s clear that no Russian missiles or artillery will be able to break our unity or lead us away from our path toward a democratic, independent Ukraine,” he said in his nightly video address to the nation.
“And it is also clear that Ukrainian unity cannot be broken by lies or intimidation, fakes or conspiracy theories.”
Funeral for girl killed in strike
Relatives and friends on Sunday attended a funeral for Liza Dmytrieva, a four-year-old girl killed on Thursday in a Russian missile strike.
The girl with Down syndrome was en route to see a speech therapist with her mother when the missiles struck Vinnytsia.
At least 24 people were killed including Liza and two boys, ages seven and eight.
More than 200 others were wounded, including Liza’s mother, who remains in an intensive care unit.
“I didn’t know Liza, but no person can go through this with calm,” said priest Vitalii Holoskevych, shedding tears as Liza’s body lay in a coffin with flowers and teddy bears in the Transfiguration Cathedral in Vinnytsia.
”We know that evil cannot win.”
In the Kharkiv region, at least three civilians were killed and three more were injured on Saturday in a pre-dawn Russian strike on Chuhuiv, just 120km from the Russian border, police said.
Lyudmila Krekshina, who lives in the apartment building that was hit, said a husband and wife were killed as well as an elderly man who lived on the ground floor.
Another resident said she was lucky to have survived.
“I was going to run and hide in the bathroom. I didn’t make it and that’s what saved me,” Valentina Bushuyeva said as she pointed to her destroyed apartment.
Ed note: An earlier version of this story drew on wire reports that indicated that the two senior Ukrainian personnel had been fired. This story has since been amended once a clarification from Ukraine was available.
Reuters/ AP
