Zelenskyy sacks top officials

UKRAINE - Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired his top security chief and the State prosecutor, after hundreds of cases of treason and collaboration with Russia were uncovered.

The Ukrainian president sacked Ivan Bakanov, Head of the Security Service, and Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, who had been leading efforts to prosecute Russian war crimes.

Zelenskyy said more than 60 officials from the SBU security service and prosecutor’s office were working against Ukraine in Russian-occupied territories, and 651 treason and collaboration cases had been opened against law enforcement officials.

The sackings and the sheer number of treason cases reveals the huge challenge of Russian infiltration as Kyiv battles Moscow in what it says is a fight for survival. ‘‘Such an array of crimes against the foundations of the national security of the State ... pose very serious questions to the relevant leaders,’’ Zelenskyy said. ‘‘Each of these questions will receive a proper answer.’’

In his nightly speech to the nation, Zelenskyy noted the recent arrest on suspicion of treason of the SBU’s former head overseeing the region of Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 that Kyiv and the West still view as Ukrainian land.

Zelenskyy said he had fired the top security official at the start of the invasion, a decision he said had now been shown to be justified.

‘‘Sufficient evidence has been collected to report this person on suspicion of treason. All his criminal activities are documented,’’ he said.

After failing to capture the capital

Kyiv early in the invasion, Russian forces using a campaign of devastating bombing now control large swaths of Ukraine’s south and east, where pro-Russian separatists already control territory.

Zelenskyy said Russia had used more than 3 000 cruise missiles to date and it was ‘impossible to count’ the number of artillery and other strikes so far. Dozens of relatives and local residents on Sunday attended the funeral of 4-year-old Liza Dmytrieva, one of 24 people killed in a Russian missile strike in the city of Vinnytsia last week. Western deliveries of longrange arms are beginning to help Ukraine on the battlefield, with Kyiv citing a string of successful strikes carried out on 30 Russian logistics and ammunitions hubs, using several multiple launch rocket systems recently supplied by the West.