Ukrainian govt sacks defence ministry’s top officials
The Ukrainian government on Monday sacked six deputy defence ministers and the ministry’s state secretary, two weeks after a new defence chief was appointed.
Taras Melnychuk, the government’s representative in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, posted on Telegram that deputy defence ministers Volodymyr Havrylov, Rostyslav Zamlynskyi, Hanna Maliar, Denys Sharapov, Andrii Shevchenko and Vitaliy Deineha, as well as Kostyantyn Vashchenko, the ministry’s state secretary, had been dismissed.
All of them were appointed under Oleksii Reznikov, the previous defence minister, with only Oleksandr Pavliuk, a general famous for his role in defending Kyiv in the first months of Russia’s full-scale invasion, keeping his post as deputy minister.
The reshuffle in one of the key agencies as Ukraine faces Russian full-scale aggression is believed to be linked with the appointment of a new defence chief, Rustem Umerov, earlier this month.
His predecessor, Mr Reznikov has been widely credited for building a rapport with Western partners crucial for Ukrainian military assistance but has also been plagued in a number of corruption scandals related to the procurement of materiel for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
It was not immediately clear who Mr Umerov, a former MP and head of the state property fund, which has been pivotal in making use of confiscated Russian assets in Ukraine, would appoint as deputy ministers.
