VIDEO. Ukraine: Zelenskiy defends ‘necessary’ decisions after resignations of several senior officials

Five regional governors and four deputy ministers have been removed from their posts in Ukraine, the government said on Tuesday following an alleged military corruption scandal at the height of the Russian invasion of the country. The governors of Dnepropetrovsk, Valentin Reznichenko, Zaporozhye, Alexander Starukh, Sumy, Dmitry Zhyvitsky, Kherson, Yaroslav Yanushevich and Kyiv, Oleksiy Kuleba regions will leave their posts, a government representative in parliament said. In November, several media outlets accused Valentin Reznichenko of awarding tens of millions of euros worth of road repair contracts to a group co-founded by his fitness trainer girlfriend.

According to the press, this man and his colleagues from the Sumy, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions are undergoing judicial investigations, and the dismissal of the Kyiv governor is connected with his next appointment in the presidential administration. The government also fired Deputy Defense Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, Deputy Social Policy Minister Vitaliy Muzychenko, and two deputy ministers of territorial development, Ivan Lukeria and Vyacheslav Negoda. Anatoliy Ivankevich and Viktor Vishnev, deputy heads of the Sea and River Transport Service of Ukraine, were also removed from their posts.

These cascading layoffs and resignations came after press revelations of inflated prices in a food supply contract for the Ukrainian army, the first corruption scandal to erupt at the Defense Ministry since the start of the war. President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Monday night a series of “personnel decisions” over the scandal. Incidents of corruption were common before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The scandal erupted after Kyiv called on its Western allies, whose military and financial backing is critical, to send hundreds of tanks to confront Moscow.