Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday dismissed Ruslan Dziuba as deputy commander of the National Guard. He then went on to say that his drive to clean up the government would continue.
Zelenskyy, in recent weeks, has ordered the dismissal of dozens of officials and opened probes as part of a widespread drive against corruption and wrongdoing. Zelenskyy did not give any reasons for dismissing Dziuba.
The European Union says addressing corruption is a requirement for Ukraine to join the 27-member bloc, Reuters reported.
Zelenskyy had earlier stressed the need for the defence ministry to be cleaned up. Zelenskyy had expressed that the defence and law enforcement institutions needed to be protected from attempts to undermine their efficiency and effectiveness and that he had convened with officials from the defence and law enforcement sectors to explore strategies for the same.
"All this activity is not just about certain episodes or criminal proceedings ... the state will continue to modernize the institutions themselves. The purity of the work of state structures must be guaranteed," he told Reuters. According to the Ukrainian defence ministry, there have been several internal audits during which hundreds of officials at the ministry or in the armed forces had been disciplined last year.