Ukraine's president is now weeding out the bad guys from his roster. Otherwise, these people can jeopardize the country's ongoing defense against the Russian invaders, if not allow them to easily conquer that country.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine had no choice but to get rid of his chief of the domestic security service together with the country's state prosecutor, dismissing them from service, accusing them of committing hundreds of cases of treason and collaboration with Russia, as Russia is poised to intensify its attack on Ukraine.
The expulsions of Ivan Bakanov, the who heads the security service, and Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, who led initiatives to indict Russian war crimes highlight the enormous challenge of Russian invasion as Kyiv fights Moscow in what it claims is a fight for life and death.
According to Zelenskiy, more than 60 SBU security agency and prosecutor's office officials are working against Ukraine in Russian-occupied territory, and 651 treason and collaboration cases have been launched against law enforcement personnel.
Zelenskiy said he got rid of the top security official at the commencement of the invasion, a choice he claimed was now vindicated.
In his nightly address to the nation, the Ukrainian president mentioned the recent arrest on suspicion of treason of the SBU's previous head in charge of the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014 but which Kyiv and the West still regard as Ukrainian territory.
Definitive proof has been gathered to charge these individuals with treason, he said. Zelenskiy added that all of his criminal acts are documented.
After failing to conquer the capital Kyiv early in the invasion, Russian forces now dominate huge swathes of Ukraine's south and east, where pro-Russian rebels already have power.
According to Zelenskiy, Russia has so far used around 3,000 cruise missiles, and the amount of artillery and other strikes is "difficult to count."
Meanwhile, dozens of family and local residents attended Liza Dmytrieva's funeral on Sunday, one of 24 people killed in a Russian missile strike in Vinnytsia last week.
Western deployments of long-range weapons are starting to help Ukraine on the ground, with Kyiv claiming a run of successful strikes on 30 Russian logistics and ammunitions hubs, employing numerous multiple launch rocket systems recently delivered by the West.
According to a separate executive order published on Zelenskyy's website, Oleksiy Symonenko has been named the new prosecutor general.
