Zelensky fires all military recruitment chiefs over graft

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has fired all 33 heads of the regional military recruitment offices after they allegedly took bribes from people desperate to avoid going to war and other forms of graft.

In a seething video address following a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council, the president said a state probe into recruitment centers across Ukraine had uncovered abuses ranging from illegal enrichment schemes to whisking draft dodgers across the border — despite a wartime ban on them leaving the country.

“In total, there are already 112 criminal proceedings against the officers of the ‘military committees,’ 33 suspects,” Zelensky said.

Among the allegations, the president singled out “illicit enrichment, legalization of illegally obtained funds, unlawful benefit, illegal transportation of persons liable for military service across the border.”

The sprawling investigation was launched after a graft scandal at a recruitment office in Odesa region last month.

“This system should be managed by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery in time of war are high treason,” Zelensky fumed.

Zelensky said that “soldiers who have been to the front or who cannot be in the trenches because they have lost their health, lost their limbs, but have saved their dignity and have no cynicism… They can be entrusted with this recruitment system.”

The president warned that “every military commissioner against whom there is a criminal investigation will be held accountable.”

Zelensky urged any dismissed recruitment chiefs who are not being investigated for corruption at this time to head the front to fight for Ukraine “if they want to keep their epaulets and prove their dignity.”

“But let me emphasize: the army is not and never will be a substitute for criminal punishment. Officials who confused epaulets with profits will definitely face trial,” he stressed.

General Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s ground forces, would be responsible for dismissing the accused crooks, Zelensky said.

New candidates for the recruitment posts would first be vetted by Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU.

Ukraine has made rooting out corruption a priority as it seeks membership of the European Union and has fired or prosecuted several top officials implicated in malfeasance.

In July, the head of the Odesa region’s recruitment center was detained on suspicion of illegal enrichment after local media reported that his family had snapped up luxury real estate in Spain.

Friday’s mass sacking comes at a challenging time for Ukraine, with its long-awaited counteroffensive hindered by Russian resistance and mine fields covering enormous swaths of the southeast.

Also Friday, Russia pounded the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk with hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, striking areas near a military airfield and killing an eight-year-old boy, regional governor Svitlana Onyshchuk said.

Air defenses shot down one of the four missiles, also known as KH-47, in Kyiv’s Obolon district. Debris from the destroyed Kinzhal landing on the grounds of a children’s hospital, damaged the roof of a house and also fell on country homes. Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported no casualties.

The other three missiles made their way westward and hit near the Kolomyia airfield and in a residential area in Ivano-Frankivsk located hundreds of miles from the front lines.

Colonel Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force, suggested the attack had been directed at young pilots who were about to travel to the West to train to fly F-16 fighter jets that Kyiv hopes will eventually be delivered after months of negotiations with allies.

“The enemy wanted to strike our young people, depriving us of the prospect of using the new Western technologies,” he told Ukrainian television. “But as we see they did not succeed in this.”

In the Zaporizhzhia region in southwestern Ukraine, which has seen heavy fighting in recent weeks, there have been reports suggesting that Kyiv’s forces were making incremental territorial gains near the village of Robotyne.

Unverified videos and photos shared on social media appeared to show Ukrainian troops inside the village following fierce battles – but Ukraine’s military has not confirmed that it seized Robotyne.  

Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of Ukrainian forces in the south, said his units have made progress.

“There is a movement forward and successes,” Tarnavskyi said on his Telegram channel.

With Post wires