Ukraine faces an administrative shake-up on Sunday due to President Volodimir Zelensky’s decision to dismiss the prosecutor general and the head of the country’s security agency due to the wave of suspicions of treason by officials in the service of Russia.
“Today I made the decision to relieve the prosecutor general and the head of the Ukrainian security agency” (SBU) of their duties, Zelensky said in his daily message to the nation.
They are the attorney general, Iryna Venediktova, in charge of investigations into the atrocities committed against civilians during the Russian occupation of the city of Bucha, on the outskirts of kyiv, and the head of the security service, Ivan Bakanov.
Zelensky said about 650 cases of possible betrayal, aid and complicity with Russia among Ukrainian security officials are being investigated.
In his evening address, Zelensky also spoke of the devastating military might that Moscow has used against Ukraine, saying that Russian forces have fired more than 3,000 cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine, as of Sunday.
‘High price’
The war, which began on February 24, would have already cost Russia the loss of 50,000 men killed and wounded, and thousands of tanks, the chief of staff of the British Armed Forces, Admiral Tony Radkin.
But despite the casualties, Russian forces continue to shell towns in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Early on Sunday, the missiles hit Kharkov, Ukraine’s second largest city, in the northeast. Several “massive bombings” were also registered in Mikolaiv (south), near the Black Sea, reported the regional governor, Vitaliy Kim.
Donetsk was also targeted by “the Russians (who) continue to bomb civilian infrastructure,” said the region’s governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko.
In this context, the ministers of the European Union (EU) will evaluate several proposals on Monday, including one from the Commission, which recommends prohibiting the purchase of gold from Russia and thus aligning sanctions with its G7 partners.
Another proposes adding new Russian personalities to the EU blacklist.
“Moscow must continue to pay a high price for its aggression,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday.
The war in Ukraine will enter its sixth month on July 24, but so far there is no official number of civilian casualties.
According to the UN, nearly 5,000 people were killed, including more than 300 children, but the real number is likely to be much higher.
Only in the city of Mariúpol (southeast), which fell in May after a terrible siege, the Ukrainian authorities indicate that there were 20,000 dead.
– Tense weekend –
In a weekend marked by tension, Russian police on Sunday detained journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, 44, who interrupted a live broadcast in March to denounce military action in Ukraine, her lawyer said, without saying. that an official statement from the Kremlin be known.
On Saturday, the Ukrainian nuclear power operator accused Russian forces of deploying missile launchers at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, an area that has been under Russian control since March..
“The situation [en la planta] it is extremely tense and the tension increases day by day. The occupiers are bringing their machinery, including the missile systems with which they have attacked the other side” of the Dnipro River and “the territory of Nikopol”, 80 km southwest of Zaporizhia, said Petro Kotin, president of the Ukrainian nuclear company Energoatom. , on Telegram.
Some 500 Russian soldiers are still in the plant compound and have it under their control, he said.
Currently, the bulk of the fighting is taking place in the south and in the Donbas mining and industrial basin in the east, partially occupied by pro-Russian separatists since 2014.
Separatist forces accused the Ukrainian army of launching 60 rockets at a Donetsk neighborhood.
“Residential buildings were hit,” they said, posting images of buildings reduced to rubble, with no casualties reported so far.
On Friday, separatist forces said they were closing in on their next target, Siversk, after taking control of sister towns Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, some 30km to the east.
According to the British Ministry of Defense, “Russian forces are slowly advancing west, after shelling and assaults in the direction of Siversk from Lysychansk, to open a route to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.”
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that it had destroyed a “storehouse of Harpoon anti-ship missiles delivered to Ukraine by NATO” in Odessa, in the south, on the shores of the Black Sea.
Ukraine denied this and said that Moscow had destroyed the “warehouse” of a non-military company.
