Ukraine war briefing: Anti-corruption agency in Kyiv accuses deputy PM of corruption

Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities suspect a sitting deputy prime minister of receiving a $345,000 kickback in a property development scheme, they said on Monday, the latest investigation into a high-level Ukrainian official over alleged graft. Following the allegations Oleksii Chernyshov told the Kyiv Independent he was “absolutely not involved” and that he would not be resigning from his post. Kyiv has stepped up its efforts to investigate allegations of corruption as it seeks membership in the European Union while also fending off Russian forces in the more than three-year-old war. Officials said they suspected the deputy PM of abusing power by approving the development of state-owned land in a scheme that would have led to a loss for the state of around $24m. The incident took place while he was serving as a minister of regional development, according to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).

Nato secretary general Mark Rutte on Monday said the allies’ support for Ukraine was unwavering and persistent, a day ahead of a Nato leaders summit in The Hague. He added that allies will provide over 35 billion euros in military aid for Ukraine this year and also said that Russia remained the most significant and direct threat facing Nato.

The death toll in a wave of Russian drones and missiles strikes overnight to Monday in and around Kyiv rose to 10 including one child. The attacks lit up the night sky with fires in residential areas and damaged the entrance to a metro station bomb shelter, Ukrainian officials said. At least nine people died in Kyiv’s busy Shevchenkivskyi district, less than a kilometre from the US embassy. At least 34 people including four children were wounded in the attacks.

Ukraine and the UK are to deepen their defence cooperation by jointly producing long-range drones, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday after talks with Keir Starmer in Downing Street aimed at forcing Russia to “think about peace”. Zelenskyy said his main objective was “to save as many lives as possible” and to “stop Russian terror”. Writing on social media, he called for “maximum political and diplomatic coordination” and closer work on “joint defence projects and weapons production”.

Ukrainian forces on Monday attacked and set ablaze an oil depot in Russia’s southern Rostov region used to supply Russian forces in occupied parts of Ukraine, the Ukrainian military said. The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said the military’s special operations units, in conjunction with rocket forces and artillery, had hit the Atlas plant in the Rostov region, not far from Ukraine’s eastern border. “A strike by our forces in the area of the target has been confirmed,” the General Staff said in a statement on Telegram. “A fire has been observed. The results of the strike are being clarified.”

Russia accused Serbia on Monday of selling artillery ammunition to Ukraine through intermediaries in eastern Europe, making the second such allegation in a month against its traditional Balkan ally. In a statement posted on its website, the Russian foreign intelligence agency, the SVR, said two Serbian companies sold rockets for multiple rocket launchers and mortar shells, or components for them, through two firms in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. Both Bulgaria and the Czech Republic belong to Nato and the European Union, and supply weapons and ammunition to Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Russia was increasing mass production of its Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile complex. Putin told a graduating class of military cadets in televised comments that the Oreshnik had proven itself very well in combat conditions. Russia has used the missiles against Ukraine and Putin said last year that Moscow could deploy the systems in neighbouring Belarus by the second half of 2025.

Ukrainian Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko was released on Sunday after more than four years in Russian custody in Crimea, according to RFE/RL. Yesypenko was arrested and jailed on 10 March 2021, in Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, on suspicion of gathering intelligence for Ukraine, a charge he denied.