Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday dismissed a longtime aide and several advisers in a continuing reshuffle, while Russia unleashed fresh attacks overnight.
Zelenskiy dismissed top aide Serhiy Shefir from his post of first assistant, where he had served since 2019. He also let go three advisers, and two presidential representatives overseeing volunteer activities and soldiers’ rights.
No explanation was immediately given for the latest changes in a wide-reaching personnel shakeup over the past few months. It included the dismissal on Tuesday of Oleksii Danilov, who served as secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, and Valerii Zaluzhnyi as commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Feb. 8. Zaluzhnyi was appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK earlier this month.
Photo: AFP
The Ukrainian Air Force on Saturday said that Russia launched 12 Shahed drones overnight, nine of which were shot down, and fired four missiles into eastern Ukraine.
Russia unleashed a barrage of 38 missiles, 75 airstrikes and 98 attacks from multiple rocket launchers over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on social media.
Two people were killed and one wounded in Russian shelling in Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk Oblast, regional Governor Vadym Filashkin said.
Ukrainian energy company Centrenergo announced that the Zmiiv Thermal Power Plant, one of the largest thermal power plants in the eastern Kharkiv Oblast, was completely destroyed following Russian shelling last week.
Power outage schedules are still in place for about 120,000 people in the region, where 700,000 people had lost electricity after the plant was hit on March 22.
Russia has escalated its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in the past few days, causing significant damage in several regions.
Officials in the Poltava Oblast on Saturday said there had been “several hits” to an infrastructure facility, without specifying whether it was an energy facility.
The toll of Friday’s mass barrage of 99 drones and missiles hitting regions across Ukraine came to light on Saturday, with local officials in the Kherson Oblast announcing the death of one civilian.
A resident of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast died in a hospital from shell wounds, regional Governor Serhiy Lisak said.
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