The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Sunday that a chronic problem of the country put in the background by the war against Russia, corruption, will not be tolerated and promised key decisions on its eradication this week, Reuters informs, Agerpres reads.

President Zelenski’s pledge comes amid allegations of high-level corruption, including allegations of shady practices in military procurement, despite officials promoting national unity to fight the Russian invasion.

„I want one thing to be clear: there will be no return to what was in the past, to the way various people close to state institutions used to live or those who spent their whole lives running for a seat,” he Zelensky said in his daily video intervention.

Ukraine has a long history of corruption and unstable governance, with Transparency International in 2021 ranking the country 122nd out of 180 in terms of corruption, not much better than Russia.

The EU has made anti-corruption reforms one of its key requirements for Ukraine’s accession, after granting Kiev candidate status last year. „This week will be the time for appropriate decisions,” the Ukrainian president said.

„Decisions have already been prepared. I don’t want to make them public at this time, but everything will be correct.”

Volodymyr Zelensky said his government had accepted the resignation of a deputy minister after an investigation into bribery allegations.

He did not identify the official, but the media reported that the interim deputy minister of Infrastructure, Vasil Lozinski, was detained on charges of accepting bribes.

The recent attention on corruption also concerns the Minister of Defense, Oleksii Reznikov, after a newspaper reported that the army would have purchased food at highly inflated prices. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry described the allegations as false, and a parliamentary commission was asked to investigate the situation.

Agerpres