Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Friday, August 11, the dismissal of all regional officials responsible for military recruitment, to eliminate a system of corruption there, in particular allowing conscripts to escape the army.
“Illegal enrichment, legalization of illegally obtained funds, illicit profits, illegal transportation across the border of conscripts. Our solution: we fire all military commissars,” Zelensky announced on Telegram, after an anti-corruption investigation. The president said that 112 criminal investigations had been launched after an inspection carried out, among others, by Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies, the security services (SBU) and the prosecutor’s office.
“There are abuses in various regions. Donetsk, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Odessa, Kiev,” he said, calling on his commander-in-chief, Valeri Zalouzhny, to replace the sacked officials with veterans of the war started by Russia. According to him, military recruitment must be organized by “soldiers who have passed through the front or who can no longer be in the trenches because they have lost their health or a limb”, because they “know that in times of war, cynicism and corruption are treason.” He promised to punish officials guilty of corruption and called on others to “go to the front” if they want to “keep their stripes and prove their dignity”.
An endemic disease
At the end of July, the Ukrainian authorities announced the arrest of a former army commissioner, responsible in particular for mobilization, suspected of having bought a villa for around 4 million euros in Spain, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ‘Ukraine.
The fight against corruption, an endemic evil in Ukraine, which was one of the poorest countries in Europe even before the Russian invasion, is one of the conditions set by the European Union for maintaining the status of candidate from Kyiv.
Since the beginning of the year, two high-profile cases have been brought to light by the country’s anti-corruption bodies. In May, the president of the Supreme Court was arrested and detained in a corruption case involving 2.5 million euros. In January, a case concerning army supplies prompted a cascade of resignations in ministries, regions and in the country’s judicial system.
