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

KYIV Ukraine AP Ukraine s top military commander reported 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 shame that has engulfed his administration After Zelenskyy s justice and vigor ministers quit Wednesday amid the probe into alleged potency sector graft the establishment fired the vice president of Energoatom the state-owned nuclear power company supposed 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 stated late Wednesday A Kyiv court has begun hearing evidence from anti-corruption watchdogs whose -month research including hours of wiretaps has brought the detention of five people and implicated another seven in the scheme that allegedly earned about million Tymur Mindich a co-owner of Zelenskyy s Kvartal media production company is the conspiracy s suspected mastermind His whereabouts are unknown The scrutiny has prompted questions about what the country s highest leaders 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 shame European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the EU would disburse Thursday a billion euros billion loan to Ukraine and promised more money for Kyiv We will cover the financial requirements of Ukraine for the next two years she announced in a speech to the European Parliament The EU and other foreign partners have poured money into Ukraine s vitality 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 several of the 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 announced And this is a clear miscalculation she noted 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 explained 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 reported 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 noted Sam McNeil contributed to this analysis from Brussels Follow AP s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https apnews com hub russia-ukraine