Kyiv’s Corruption Crackdown, Russian Attacks Portend Hot Winter

Amid signs that German diesel-powered Leopard 2 tanks could be making their way to the front lines of eastern Ukraine sooner rather than later, President Zelensky has been putting out fires within his own administration in a fierce crackdown on corruption at Kyiv. An unspecified number of arrests have been made, high-ranking officials have either been fired or resigned, and there is a moratorium on foreign travel by public officials. All this is happening while fighting rages in the eastern Donbas region and as more Russian artillery and rocket attacks across no fewer than eight regions of Ukraine have reportedly killed five civilians and injured at least six in a 24-period between Monday and Tuesday. Those attacks occurred in the Donetsk, Kherson, Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions. One month shy of a full year since Vladmir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces have been on the offensive in the illegally annexed Zaporizhzhia region, with airstrikes and intensified artillery fire targeting multiple settled areas. In addition to the obvious strategic concerns at both the geopolitical and local levels, Mr. Zelensky is attempting to navigate a steady course through what has become the worst corruption scandal in Ukraine since the beginning of the war. The cascade began last week when a Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, resigned after suggesting that a Russian missile that struck a building at Dnipro could have been shot down by Ukrainian air defenses. In that Russian attack, 44 people were killed. While Mr. Arestovych had been held in generally high regard, his remarks had no basis in fact and triggered calls for his dismissal. Events at the capital since Mr. Arestovych’s resignation point to more than a mere government reshuffle. On Sunday, Mr. Zelensky fired Ukraine’s deputy minister of regional development, territories and infrastructure, Vassily Lozinsky, who stood accused of bribery. Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau had arrested Mr. Lozinsky the day prior after catching him in flagrante delicto accepting a $400,000 bribe for procuring electric generators from abroad at artificially high prices. It gets worse: the deputy defense minister, Vyacheslav Shapovalov, tendered his resignation on Tuesday in the wake of an investigation by a Ukrainian newspaper into purchases made for various food items for the military at prices two to three times higher than those at Kyiv grocery stores. Prior to Mr. Shapovalov’s resignation, the Kyiv Independent reported that the defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, threatened to turn security forces loose on the whistleblower who had leaked the bogus contract to journalists.There is more: Ukraine’s deputy prosecutor general, Oleksiy Symonenko, was fired in the wake of a foreign holiday scandal. Mr. Symonenko took a 10-day vacation with his family over the New Year’s holiday at Marbella, Spain, allegedly borrowing the Mercedes of a prominent Ukrainian businessman, Grigory Kozlovsky, to drive to the Spanish resort city and then back to Ukraine. An official from the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, confirmed the termination. Separately, Mr. Zelensky’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, has tendered his resignation. According to a Ukrainian journalistic investigative unit called Bihus, Mr. Tymoshenko had been using for his own purposes a Chevrolet Tahoe that had been donated for evacuating civilians from combat zones. The accusation did not prevent Mr. Tymoshenko — whose expected replacement is the regional governor of Kyiv, Oleksiy Kuleba — from stating on his Telegram channel, “I thank the president for the trust and the opportunity to do good deeds every day and every minute.”It is the misdeeds of a growing roster of high-ranking Ukrainian officials that are now clearly in Mr. Zelensky’s sights. The last thing the Ukrainian leader needs as he pleads with the West to send heavier, more advanced tanks like the Leopard 2 is the perception that he has not done enough to shake up the country’s long-festering corruption problem. Conflicts of interest and allegations of corruption in the energy sector are well-known, such as Hunter Biden’s business dealing with the Ukrainian energy giant Burisma. Yet the appearance of war profiteering within Ukraine by government officials creates optics that Mr. Zelensky can ill afford, especially as the relative winter lull in fighting will likely come to a close within a matter of weeks.As of midweek, the purge was not over. Ukrainian media reported that a deputy chief of staff for Mr. Zelensky, Oleh Tatarov, was set to resign. The newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported that a trio of ministers, for sport, fuel and energy, and strategic industries, might also face imminent termination, though few details were given.In the meantime, according to a statement posted on the Ukrainian defense ministry’s website, the resignation of Mr. Shapovalov, the deputy defense minister, was “a worthy deed.”Not surprisingly, comments and social media lit up as the shakeup at Kyiv unfolded. One reader of London’s Telegraph wrote that “nothing happens [in Ukraine] in business without brown envelopes changing hands. Even the Bidens benefited from the corruption — anyone who has tried to do business there will attest the appalling corruption of local officials and the judiciary.” The string of resignations and firings will have the knock-on effect of putting pressure on the Biden administration to more effectively track the flow of American money and weapons into Ukraine. Perhaps mindful of that strain, a top adviser to Mr Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, said via Twitter on Tuesday that “Zelensky’s personnel decisions testify to the key priorities of the state,” adding that “during the war, everyone should understand their responsibility. And he directly responds to a key public demand — justice for all.”

Kyiv’s Corruption Crackdown, Russian Attacks Portend Hot Winter

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