Zelensky grapples with fallout from corruption scandal after departure of two Ukrainian ministers

Ukraine’s top military commander said Thursday he visited troops manning the front lines in a key eastern city under siege by Russian forces, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky grapples with the fallout from a corruption scandal that has engulfed his administration.

After Zelensky’s justice and energy ministers resigned Wednesday amid an investigation into alleged corruption in the energy sector, the government fired the vice president of Energoatom, the state nuclear energy company that investigators say was at the center of the bribery scheme.

The heads of Energoatom’s financial, legal and purchasing departments as well as a consultant to Energoatom’s president were also fired, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Wednesday evening.

A kyiv court has begun hearing testimony from anti-corruption watchdogs whose 15-month investigation, including 1,000 hours of wiretaps, led to the detention of five people and the involvement of seven others in the scheme that reportedly netted around US$100 million.

Tymur Mindich, co-owner of Zelensky’s Kvartal 95 media production company, is the alleged mastermind of the plot. We don’t know where he is.

The investigation raised questions about what the country’s top officials knew about the project. It also stirred memories of Zelensky’s attempt last summer to restrict anti-corruption watchdogs in Ukraine. He backtracked after widespread street protests in Ukraine and pressure from the European Union, which pushed the country to tackle entrenched corruption.

As Ukrainians expressed anger and disbelief over the unfolding scandal, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU would disburse a $7 billion U.S. loan to Ukraine on Thursday and promised more money for kyiv.

“We will cover Ukraine’s financial needs over the next two years,” she said in a speech to the European Parliament.

The EU and other foreign partners have invested money in Ukraine’s energy sector. Russia has relentlessly bombed the power grid, requiring repeated repairs.

The EU is exploring how it could find more money for Ukraine, either by seizing frozen Russian assets, raising money on capital markets, or asking some of the 27 EU countries to raise the money themselves.

Russian President Vladimir Putin “thinks he can outlast us” in the battle for Ukraine’s future, almost four years after Russia completely invaded its neighbor, von der Leyen said.

“And that’s clearly a miscalculation,” she said. “So the time has come, with new momentum, to unblock Putin’s cynical attempt to buy time and bring him to the negotiating table.”

WATCH | Russia attempts to firmly seize key eastern city:

Russia wants to surround the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk

Pokrovsk has been almost cleared of civilians as Russia attempts to firmly seize the city which is strategic for capturing Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

Meanwhile, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, visited units fighting to hold Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region and to coordinate operations in person, he said on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukrainian troops are engaged in street fighting with Russian forces in the city and struggling to avoid being encircled by a larger Russian force as Russia’s war of attrition slowly spreads across the countryside.

Syrskyi said the main goals are to regain control of certain areas of the city, as well as to protect logistics routes and create new ones, so that troops can be supplied and the wounded can be evacuated.

“There is no question of Russian control over the city of Pokrovsk or operational encirclement of Ukrainian defense forces in the region,” Syrskyi said.