Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has called for wartime elections in Ukraine in the biggest challenge to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion.
Former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov calls for wartime elections. Popular 35-year-old says 'democracy must not be held hostage'. Tech-savy Fedorov also criticizes corruption, reform resistance and 'systemic' crisis.
A second suspect has been arrested in relation to the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions in 2022, German prosecutors said on Wednesday. Croatian police, acting on a European arrest warrant, detained a Ukrainian national in Pula, prosecutors said. They said that Vladimir Z., a trained scuba diver, "is strongly suspected of jointly causing explosions."
Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies said on Wednesday that the targets of a new investigation included a deputy head of the presidential office, a former lawmaker, heads of the management and supervisory boards of a state-owned bank, among others. The NABU and SAPO agencies said the group is suspected of having laundered 150 million hryvnias ($3.35 million; €2.89 million) used to pay for bail in an energy corruption scheme. NABU said it was "conducting a special operation to expose a criminal organization led by a current and a former Ukrainian lawmaker and involving senior officials from the President's Office."
A drone reportedly caused a small fire after falling in an industrial complex in the Russian city of Ufa, local authorities said on Wednesday. Radiy Khabirov, the head of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, added that another drone hit an apartment building and several cars, injuring at least one person. Ufa is the tenth-most populous city in Russia and is an important oil refining hub. Moscow claimed to have shot down 453 Ukrainian drones over Russia overnight.
At least four civilians were killed and another four injured in a Russian drone attack on a bus in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Wednesday morning, according to local authorities. "Russian military forces attacked a bus travelling down a street in Kherson with a drone," the local prosecutor's office said in a statement. Regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin posted images online showing a small bus with shattered windows and a blood-stained floor.
Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies announced on Wednesday that they had launched an investigation into members of parliament and government advisers close to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) didn't provide further details, but the investigation increases the political pressure on the president. The investigation comes the morning after recently ousted former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov called for wartime elections.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's term in office was technically due to end in May 2024 but Ukrainian martial law, which has been in place since the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, constitutionally prohibits the staging of elections during wartime. Recent polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) suggests that only around 10% of Ukrainians believe elections should be held immediately, during wartime, and that the vast majority accept the need to wait until after the war.
In his video address, former Defense Minister Fedorov said that Ukraine must find a way of holding elections despite the practical and logistical challenges posed by the ongoing Russian invasion. "We must find a legal, safe and realistic mechanism that will allow Ukraine to renew its full democratic process even under the conditions of a long war," he said. Fedorov appeared to issue an open challenge by stating that Ukraine faced a "systemic crisis of governance" and criticizing continuing corruption. "The old system lives by its own rules too often," he said. "It protects itself. It is scared of change."
The recently ousted Ukrainian Defense Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has called for Ukraine to hold wartime elections in what constitutes the biggest challenge to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion. "Democracy must not be held hostage by Russia," Fedorov, 35, said in a bombshell video message broadcast on Tuesday evening. Fedorov's announcement came just hours after Zelenskyy had nominated acting Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara to be Fedorov's permanent successor at the defense ministry.
