{"id":256201,"date":"2022-07-18T06:54:46","date_gmt":"2022-07-18T06:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=256201"},"modified":"2022-07-20T07:52:24","modified_gmt":"2022-07-20T07:52:24","slug":"ukraine-president-sacks-security-chief-top-prosecutor-over-treason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=256201","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine president sacks security chief, top prosecutor over ‘treason’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Press TV \u2013 July 18, 2022<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has sacked\u00a0the head of the country\u2019s powerful domestic security service, the SBU, and\u00a0the prosecutor general, accusing them of collaborating with Russia on security and military issues.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The embattled president issued the executive orders late on Sunday,\u00a0citing\u00a0more than 650 alleged treason and collaboration cases and alleging\u00a0that more than 60 officials from the SBU security service and prosecutor\u2019s office have been spying for Moscow in Russian-liberated territories.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs of today, some 651 criminal cases have been registered on high treason and collaboration activities of employees of the prosecutor\u2019s office, pre-trial investigation bodies, and other law enforcement agencies,\u201d\u00a0Zelensky stated.<\/p>\n

The sackings of SBU chief Ivan Bakanov, and Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova marks\u00a0the biggest political development since the start of Russia’s\u00a0military operation in Ukraine almost five months ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuch an array of crimes against the foundations of the national security of the state … pose very serious questions to the relevant leaders,\u201d Zelensky said, adding that \u201ceach of these questions will receive a proper answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also noted that he had fired SBU\u2019s former head overseeing the region of Crimea\u00a0at the start of the invasion.<\/p>\n

\u201cSufficient evidence has been collected to report this person on suspicion of treason. All his criminal activities are documented,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Bakanov, a childhood friend of Zelensky,\u00a0was appointed to head the SBU in 2019, one of an array of new faces who rose to prominence after Zelensky.<\/p>\n

While Bakanov\u2019s successor has not been named yet, the Ukrainian president appointed Oleksiy Symonenko as the new prosecutor general in a separate executive order after firing the top officials.<\/p>\n

The development comes in the wake of Russian preparation for the next step of its military action in Ukraine after Moscow announced\u00a0its forces would step up operations in \u201call operational areas,\u201d according to a Ukrainian official.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not only missile strikes from the air and sea,\u201d said Vadym Skibitskyi, a spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence. \u201cWe can see shelling along the entire line of contact, along the entire front line. There is active use of tactical aviation and attack helicopters.”<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian military said Russia appeared to be regrouping units for an attack on Sloviansk, located\u00a0southwest of Lysychansk.<\/p>\n

This comes as Kiev\u00a0has received more deliveries of longer-range missile systems from its Western allies, despite warnings from Russia.<\/p>\n

As the conflict continues to rage across various parts of Ukraine, Russia\u2019s defense minister Sergey Shoigu on a surprise\u00a0visit to Ukraine on Saturday ordered military units to intensify operations to prevent Ukrainian strikes on eastern Ukraine and other areas held by Russia, according to a statement from the ministry.<\/p>\n

Shoigu met the commanding officers of the \u2018South\u2019 and \u2018Center\u2019 troops, Army General Sergey Surovikin and Colonel General Alexander Lapin, as well as other senior commanding officers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe head of the Russian defense ministry gave the necessary instructions to ramp up the actions of groups in all operational areas in order to exclude the possibility of the Kiev regime launching massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of settlements across Donbass and other regions,\u201d\u00a0the military said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, responded to Ukrainian officials’ statements that Kiev may strike the bridge linking Crimea and Russia, warning that that would trigger devastating consequences for the Ukrainian leadership.<\/p>\n

“If that happens, the consequences will be obvious: They will momentarily face Doomsday,” Medvedev said on Sunday. “It would be very hard for them to hide.”<\/p>\n

Medvedev\u00a0said Russia will press its action in Ukraine until fulfilling its stated goal of “denazifying” and “demilitarising” the country.<\/p>\n

Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine in late February, following Kiev\u2019s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements and Moscow\u2019s recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.<\/p>\n

At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin said one of the goals of what he called a \u201cspecial military operation\u201d was to \u201cde-Nazify\u201d Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ukraine’s President Zelensky has sacked the head of the country\u2019s domestic security service, the SBU, and the prosecutor general, after accusing both of collaborating with Russia <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":250503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=256201"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256213,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256201\/revisions\/256213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/250503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}