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Scoop of the day: Health minister sacked

Scoop of the day: Health minister sacked

Government reshuffle

Parliament has dismissed Health Minister Maksym Stepanov with 292 votes. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who suggested his dismissal, was unhappy about the slow pace of Covid-19 vaccination.

MPs have also dismissed Economy Minister Ihor Petrashko and Infrastructure Minister Vladyslav Krykliy, having accepted their resignation requests.

The head of the pro-presidential faction Servant of the People, Davyd Arakhamiya, has said at a briefing that he expects no further reshuffles in the government until the autumn.

Medvedchuk's case

The Prosecutor-General's Office has appealed against the Kyiv Pecherskyy district court's decision to put pro-Russian MP Viktor Medvedchuk under house arrest despite the fact that he is suspected of high treason. According to Medvedchuk's ally Renat Kuzmin, the defence also appealed his house arrest.

Security

Russia still keeps around 80,000 troops and a large number of weapons and military hardware near the Ukrainian border, Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander Col-Gen Ruslan Khomchak has said at a meeting of the NATO Military Committee plus Ukraine. Russia also keeps vessels and boats in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov which are normally part of the Northern Fleet and the Caspian flotilla, "which allows Russia to quickly boost the offensive capacity of its armed forces' group to attack Ukraine".

Donbas

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has visited the Stanytsya Luhanska checkpoint on the line of contact in Donbas together with Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Reznikov. She reiterated Estonia's support for Ukraine's territorial integrity and called on Kyiv to proceed with reforms "to let people see that living in the free territory is better, that Ukraine is a European country".

Search

Officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) have searched an apartment building where Kyiv mayor Vitaliy Klitschko resides. The SBU said that it was done within the framework of a criminal case on the import of fake oil products worth over 100m hryvnas from Belarus and Russia and that the suspects used one of the apartments in this building as their office.

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