Ukrainian soldiers work on a tank in Kupiansk, Ukraine, on Jan. 23.Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Ukraine dismissed more than a dozen senior officials including governors of several major battlefield provinces on Tuesday in the biggest shake-up of its wartime leadership since Russia’s invasion last year.
Separately on Tuesday, a long-awaited decision on whether allies could send German-made heavy tanks to Ukraine finally confronted Berlin, after Poland said it had formally sent its request to the German government.
Among Ukrainian officials who resigned or were dismissed on Tuesday were the governors of the Kyiv, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and adjacent Dnipropetrovsk are frontline provinces now; Kyiv and Sumy were major battlefields earlier in the war.
A deputy defence minister, a deputy prosecutor, a deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office and two deputy ministers responsible for regional development were among the others who left.
Some, though not all, had been linked with corruption allegations. Ukraine has a history of graft and shaky governance, and is under international pressure to show it can be a reliable steward of billions of dollars in Western aid.
“There are already personnel decisions – some today, some tomorrow – regarding officials at various levels in ministries and other central government structures, as well as in the regions and in law enforcement,” Zelensky said in an overnight video address.
Zelensky aide Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted: “The president sees and hears society. And he directly responds to a key public demand – justice for all.”
Deputy head of Ukraine's Presidential Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko holds up a note written on a sheet of paper as he tenders his resignation in this picture released on social media on Jan. 24.KYRYLO TYMOSHENKO VIA TELEGRAM/Reuters
The purge came two days after a deputy infrastructure minister was arrested and accused of siphoning off $400,000 from contracts to buy generators – one of the first big corruption scandals to become public since the war began 11 months ago.
The Defence Ministry said Deputy Defence Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, responsible for supplying troops, had resigned to retain trust after what it called untrue media accusations of corruption. It followed a newspaper report that the ministry overpaid for food for troops, which the ministry denied.
The prosecutor’s office gave no reason for the sacking of Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Symonenko, who had been under fire in Ukrainian media for taking a holiday in Spain. Though Zelensky did not name any officials in his address, he announced a new ban on officials holidaying abroad.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy chief of staff in Zelensky’s office, announced his own resignation, also citing no reason. He had helped run the president’s 2019 election campaign and more recently had a role in overseeing regional policy.
The changes amount to a rare shake-up of an otherwise notably stable wartime leadership in Kyiv. Apart from purging a spy agency in July, Zelensky has mostly stuck with his team, built around fellow political novices the former television actor brought into power when he was elected in a landslide in 2019.
Western-made tanks sought by Ukraine
SSupplying Ukraine with modern main battle tanks such as Britain’s
Challenger 2 or Germany’s Leopard 2 would be a significant
step up in Western support
Manufacturer: BAE Systems
CHALLENGER 2
Main armament: 120mm L30 rifled gun
Entered service: 1998
Crew: Four
Secondary armament:
Two 7.62mm machine guns
Weight:
62 tonnes
Road speed:
56km/h
Engine: 12-cylinder, 1,200hp
Perkins Caterpillar CV12 diesel
Protection: Second-generation
Chobham armour on turret and hull
Manufacturer: Krauss-Maffei Wegmann
LEOPARD 2
Main armament: 120mm L55 gun
Entered service: 2001
Crew: Four
Secondary armament:
Two 7.62mm machine guns
Weight:
62 tonnes
Road speed:
72km/h
Engine: 12-cylinder, 1,500hp
MTU MB 873 diesel
Protection: Spaced multilayer armour,
improved armour over front turret
graphic news, Sources: Army Recognition, Reuters
Western-made tanks sought by Ukraine
Supplying Ukraine with modern main battle tanks such as Britain’s
Challenger 2 or Germany’s Leopard 2 would be a significant
step up in Western support
Manufacturer: BAE Systems
CHALLENGER 2
Main armament: 120mm L30 rifled gun
Entered service: 1998
Crew: Four
Secondary armament:
Two 7.62mm machine guns
Weight:
62 tonnes
Road speed:
56km/h
Engine: 12-cylinder, 1,200hp
Perkins Caterpillar CV12 diesel
Protection: Second-generation
Chobham armour on turret and hull
Manufacturer: Krauss-Maffei Wegmann
LEOPARD 2
Main armament: 120mm L55 gun
Entered service: 2001
Crew: Four
Secondary armament:
Two 7.62mm machine guns
Weight:
62 tonnes
Road speed:
72km/h
Engine: 12-cylinder, 1,500hp
MTU MB 873 diesel
Protection: Spaced multilayer armour,
improved armour over front turret
graphic news, Sources: Army Recognition, Reuters
Western-made tanks sought by Ukraine
Supplying Ukraine with modern main battle tanks such as Britain’s Challenger 2 or
Germany’s Leopard 2 would be a significant step up in Western support
Manufacturer: BAE Systems
CHALLENGER 2
Main armament: 120mm L30 rifled gun
Entered service: 1998
Crew: Four
Secondary armament:
Two 7.62mm machine guns
Weight:
62 tonnes
Road speed:
56km/h
Engine: 12-cylinder, 1,200hp
Perkins Caterpillar CV12 diesel
Protection: Second-generation
Chobham armour on turret and hull
Manufacturer: Krauss-Maffei Wegmann
LEOPARD 2
Main armament: 120mm smoothbore L55 gun
Entered service: 2001
Crew: Four
Secondary armament:
Two 7.62mm machine guns
Weight:
62 tonnes
Road speed:
72km/h
Engine: 12-cylinder, 1,500hp
MTU MB 873 diesel
Protection: Spaced multilayer armour,
improved armour over front turret
graphic news, Sources: Army Recognition, Reuters
Poland’s announcement that it had officially asked for Berlin’s permission to export German-made tanks to Ukraine appears to leave German Chancellor Olaf Scholz little room to continue putting off a decision in the main debate among allies over how best to support Ukraine.
“I hope that this answer from Germany will come quickly, because the Germans are delaying, dodging, acting in a way that is difficult to understand,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference. “We can see that they do not want to help Ukraine defend itself in a wider way.”
A German government spokesperson said: “We will treat the proceedings with the urgency they deserve.”
Kyiv has pleaded for months for Western tanks, which its says it desperately needs to give its forces the firepower and mobility to break through Russian defensive lines and recapture occupied territory in the east and south.
Scholz’s Social Democrats have held back, wary of moves that could spur Russia to escalate the war, and what they see as a risk of the NATO alliance being drawn into the conflict.
Germany’s Leopards, fielded by armies across Europe, are widely seen as the best option, available in large numbers and easy to deploy and maintain. But Germany has so far resisted pressure to pledge any of its own Leopards, and until now had said its allies had yet to formally request permission to send theirs.
“The Germans have already received our request for permission to transfer Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine,” Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak wrote on Twitter.
“I also appeal to the German side to join the coalition of countries supporting Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks. This is our common cause, because the security of the whole of Europe is at stake!”
The chief of staff of Germany’s military said that whether to send tanks was a political decision. A senior official said the choice lay ultimately with Scholz and his cabinet.
“At the end of the day, the decision will obviously be taken at the chancellery, in consensus by the government,” Tobias Lindner, state secretary at the foreign ministry, said at a defence conference in Berlin organized by Handelsblatt.
Front lines in the war have been largely frozen in place for two months despite heavy losses on both sides. Russia and Ukraine are both widely believed to be planning offensives. A Ukrainian official said the upcoming spring and summer would be decisive.
“If the major Russian offensive planned for this time fails, it will be the ruin of Russia and Putin,” Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, said in an interview with news site Delfi.
In Russia, lawmakers were preparing legislation to require some vehicles trying to leave the country by land to book a time and place in advance to cross the border. RIA Novosti state news agency quoted transport ministry officials as saying the measure was aimed at curbing traffic at border crossings.
Last year, hundreds of thousands of Russian men fled the country after President Vladimir Putin ordered the first mobilization since World War Two, calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists to fight in his “special military operation” in Ukraine.
A Ukrainian soldier who goes by the nom de guerre 'Kyivan' on Jan. 23 published a selfie video on social media in which he said the situation in Bakhmut was difficult, but stable.
Reuters
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday that he had been asked to conclude a non-aggression pact with Ukraine, the Belta state news agency reported, citing comments that suggested he saw Kyiv as a potential threat.
Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, disclosed the alleged offer to a meeting of government and law enforcement officials at which he also accused Ukraine – without evidence – of allowing its territory to be used by the West to train and arm militants who could destabilize the situation in Belarus.
Lukashenko was quoted by Belta as saying:
“ … They are asking us not to go to war with Ukraine in any circumstances, not to move our troops there. They are proposing we conclude a non-aggression pact.”
It was not immediately clear from his comments whether Ukraine itself or the West had made the alleged offer.
There was no immediate response from Kyiv, where officials have said they are worried that Moscow may use Belarus as a launching pad for a new attack on Ukraine from the north.
The Kremlin declined to comment “for now” on whether Lukashenko would discuss the alleged offer with Putin.
Minsk allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to send troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year. Its own troops have so far not fought in the war however, while stepping up joint military training with Russian forces deployed in Belarus.
In the same speech, Belta cited Lukashenko as accusing Ukraine of hosting militants who could be part of an alleged long-term Western plan to destabilize his country.
“I don’t know why the Ukrainians need this,” Lukashenko was quoted as saying. He said his security forces would respond harshly to any threat to internal order and did not want a repeat of mass protests against him in 2020/21 which he cast at the time as part of an alleged Western regime change plot.
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