Ukraine's army chief visits besieged city as Zelenskyy confronts graft scandal

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s top military commander said Thursday he visited troops holding the front line in a key eastern city besieged by Russian forces, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy grappled with the fallout from a corruption scandal that has engulfed his administration.

After Zelenskyy’s justice and energy ministers quit Wednesday amid the investigation into alleged energy sector graft, the government fired the vice president of Energoatom, the state-owned nuclear power company believed by investigators to be at the center of the kickback scheme.

The heads of Energoatom’s finance, legal and procurement departments and a consultant to Energoatom’s president were also dismissed in the clear-out, Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko said late Wednesday.

A Kyiv court has begun hearing evidence from anti-corruption watchdogs whose 15-month investigation, including 1,000 hours of wiretaps, has brought the detention of five people and implicated another seven in the scheme that allegedly earned about $100 million.

Tymur Mindich, a co-owner of Zelenskyy’s Kvartal 95 media production company, is the conspiracy’s suspected mastermind. His whereabouts are unknown.

The investigation has prompted questions about what the country’s highest officials knew of the scheme. It has also awakened memories of Zelenskyy’s attempt last summer to curtail Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdogs. He backtracked after widespread street protests in Ukraine and pressure from the European Union, which has pushed the country to address entrenched corruption.

While Ukrainians expressed anger and disbelief at the unfolding scandal, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU would disburse Thursday a 6 billion euros ($7 billion) loan to Ukraine and promised more money for Kyiv.

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

The EU and other foreign partners have poured money into Ukraine’s energy sector. Russia has relentlessly bombarded the power grid, which requires repeated repairs.

The EU is looking into how it can come up with more money for Ukraine, either by seizing frozen Russian assets, raising funds on capital markets, or having some of the 27 EU nations raise the money themselves.

Russian President Vladimir Putin “thinks he can outlast us” in the battle over Ukraine’s future, nearly four years after Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor, von der Leyen said.

“And this is a clear miscalculation,” she said. “Now is therefore the moment to come, with a new impetus, to unlock Putin’s cynical attempt to buy time and bring him to the negotiation table.”

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

Ukrainian troops are locked in street battles with Russian forces in the city and fighting to prevent becoming surrounded by a bigger Russian force as Russia's war of attrition slowly grinds across the countryside.

Syrskyi said the key goals are to regain control of certain areas of the city, as well as protect logistic 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 of the operational encirclement of Ukraine’s defense forces in the area,” Syrskyi said.

___