Ukraine’s army chief visits besieged city

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. The investigation has prompted questions about what the country’s highest officials knew of the scheme. It has also awakened memories of Zelenskyy’s attempt last summer to curtail Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdogs. He backtracked after widespread street protests in Ukraine and pressure from the European Union, which has pushed the country to address entrenched corruption. While Ukrainians expressed anger and disbelief at the unfolding scandal, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU would disburse on Thursday a 6 billion euros (USD 7 billion) loan to Ukraine and promised more money for Kyiv. “We will cover the financial needs of Ukraine for the next two years,” she said in a speech to the European Parliament. The EU and other foreign partners have poured money into Ukraine’s energy sector. Russia has relentlessly bombarded the power grid, which requires repeated repairs. The EU is looking into how it can come up with more money for Ukraine, either by seizing frozen Russian assets, raising funds on capital markets, or having some of the 27 EU nations raise the money themselves. @@@