The US comments on Ukraine dismissing top law enforcement officials
Photo by Associated Press
The United States is aware of the latest personnel decisions of the Ukrainian authorities and will "carefully monitor" the situation
The official spokesperson of the US State Department, Ned Price, said this at a briefing on Monday.
As he noted, it will not affect the exchange of information, particularly intelligence.
"First, when it comes to the news we've heard out of Kyiv, we are aware of the reports, and we'll continue to carefully monitor the situation. We are in daily contact with our Ukrainian partners," said Price.
A spokesperson of the US State Department added that the United States, in its relations with Ukraine, "invest not in personalities; we invest in institutions." That is why they are confident they will be able to establish contact with the new head of the Prosecutor General's Office.
"We are leaning forward in terms of the information that we are sharing with our Ukrainian partners to help them build the case for accountability against those who may have perpetrated war crimes and other atrocities.
The fact is that accountability and what is useful in terms of building these cases oftentimes is not especially sensitive," Price said.
Ned Price noted that a couple of months ago, the US established the Conflict Observatory, whose role is to collect, assimilate, and make accessible open-source information that points to potential atrocity crimes.
"And so much of the information, much of what we do pass to the office of the prosecutor general on a routine basis, is open-source information.
We do have an intelligence-sharing relationship with our Ukrainian counterparts. That is, we continue to proceed ahead with that. It's an important element of the assistance that we are providing to our Ukrainian partners in an effort to help them defend themselves," the representative of the State Department concluded.
As Rubryka reported, on Sunday, Zelensky suspended Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova and removed the chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Ivan Bakanov, from his post.
He explained this by the fact that many crimes against national security and the connections of representatives of law enforcement agencies with the russian special services pose challenging questions to the heads of these two bodies.
Deputy Head of the President's Office Andrii Smirnov later emphasized that Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova and Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov were not dismissed but temporarily suspended for the investigation.
On Monday evening, Zelensky submitted to the Verkhovna Rada a motion to dismiss Bakanov from the position of head of the Security Service of Ukraine and Venediktova from the role of the prosecutor general.
Read Rubryka's daily timeline of war: current news on Ukraine's defense against russia's aggression.
