Air strikes continue as Ukraine sacks army recruitment chiefs in corruption crackdown

Ukraine announced the sacking of senior military recruitment officers nationwide in an anti-corruption crackdown, as Moscow launched more deadly missile strikes on the country and drew condemnation from a United Nations official after a hotel used by the organisation’s staff was hit.

Kyiv said an eight-year-old boy was killed in a residential area of western Ukraine after Russia fired four advanced Kinzhal (“Dagger”) missiles at the region on Friday morning. Three struck close to an airfield in the Ivano-Frankivsk province, where officials said Ukrainian pilots were located before going abroad for training on western fighter jets.

One missile was shot down over Kyiv, where loud explosions rang out and city mayor Vitali Klitschko said debris fell in the grounds of a children’s hospital and elsewhere.

Russian officials said two explosive-laden drones were shot down at about the same time in Moscow, and passenger flights in and out of the city’s busy Vnukovo airport were temporarily suspended for the third time in as many days due to hostile drone activity that the Kremlin blames on Ukraine.

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At least one person was killed and 16 hurt on Thursday in a rocket strike on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, which endures almost daily shelling and missile attacks as Ukrainian forces try to expel Russian troops from the partly occupied region of the same name.

One building badly damaged in Thursday’s attack was a hotel regularly used by UN staff, employees of other aid agencies and visiting journalists. Hotels with similar clientele have been hit in recent deadly Russian strikes on the eastern cities of Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk.

“I am appalled by the news that a hotel frequently used by United Nations personnel and our colleagues from NGOs supporting people affected by the war has been hit by a Russian strike in Zaporizhzhia. It is utterly inadmissible,” said Denise Brown, UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Ukraine.

“The number of indiscriminate attacks hitting civilian infrastructure, killing and injuring civilians, have reached unimaginable levels – these attacks violate international humanitarian law ... I call on the Russian Federation to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law and immediately stop indiscriminate attacks on Ukraine,” she added.

[ Ukraine orders evacuation as Russia tries to retake eastern area ]

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced in Kyiv on Friday that the heads of military recruitment centres in every region of the country would be sacked following a spate of scandals in which officials have allegedly taken bribes to give people exemptions from the army and help them travel abroad to escape conscription.

“We are dismissing all regional ‘military commissars’. This system should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery in times of war constitute treason,” Mr Zelenskiy said.

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“Warriors who have served on the frontline or who cannot be in the trenches because they have lost their health, lost their limbs, but have retained their dignity and have no cynicism are the ones who can be entrusted with this system of recruitment,” he added.

Mr Zelenskiy also lambasted the work of military medical commissions, amid accusations that doctors are providing army exemption notes in exchange for cash: “The way they treat warriors, the way they treat their duties ... It is just immoral,” he said.