Ukraine's parliament has approved a proposal by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to appoint Andriy Kostin as prosecutor-general after the dismissal of Iryna Venediktova from the post last week, a move that put a spotlight on Kyiv's battle to purge its powerful security agencies of collaborators and Russian agents after Moscow launched a war against Ukraine on February 24.
According to the legislative in a post on Telegram, a total of 299 deputies in the 450-seat Verkhovna Rada voted in favor of the move to install Kostin, a member of Zelenskiy's Servant of the People party.
Zelenskiy fired Venediktova, along with Ivan Bakanov, head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and a lifelong friend. He said 651 cases had been opened into suspected treason and collaboration by prosecutors and law enforcement officials, and that more than 60 people from Bakanov's and Venediktova's agencies were now working against Kyiv in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
Zelenskiy subsequently sacked the deputy head of the SBU and four regional SBU heads, while Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigations said the former chief of the SBU's directorate for Crimea, Oleh Kulinich, had been placed in pretrial detention on a charge of high treason. He will remain in custody at least until September 13.
Kulinich, who led the SBU's directorate for Ukraine's Russia-annexed Crimea from October 2020 until March this year, was arrested on July 16 on suspicion of collaboration with Russian secret services. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Venediktova is expected to remain a part of Zelenskiy's team, possibly in a diplomatic position, according to some senior lawmakers with the Servant of the People party.
