Kyiv: A day after firing the top security chief Ivan Bakanov and state prosecutor Iryna Venediktova of treason, Prez Zelensky signed a decree on Monday, appointing Bakanov’s first deputy, Vasyl Maliuk, as the acting head of the agency. Maluik has a reputation for fighting corruption. More than 60 employees of the prosecutor’s office and the Security Service in the occupied territory are working “against our state,” Zelneskyy said. More than 650 criminal proceedings have been started regarding treason and collaboration activities.
Around 6 died in shelling in an early morning attack in Toretsk in the eastern region of Donetsk. A two-storey building collapsed with people inside, a source in the know said. Around three were rescued from under the rubble and one died in the hospital
Later on Monday, the US State Secretary Antony Blinken will meet Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska in Washington as Zelenska presses her husband’s campaign for more military support from the West.
With the war advancing, the EU foreign ministers in a video conference decided to tighten sanctions on Russia and consider ways to ban gold exports “in hopes that the measures might finally start to have a decisive impact on the war in Ukraine.” The group was exchanging views on the Russian aggression with Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba – and pledged another $500 million in military aid to Ukraine’s coffers.