Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a deputy chief of staff for President Volodymyr Zelensky, has submitted his resignation, online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported on Jan. 23, citing anonymous sources in the government.
He is expected to be replaced with Oleksiy Kuleba, governor of Kyiv Oblast, according to the sources.
The governors of Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts are expected to resign too, the sources said.
According to the Bihus.info investigative journalism project, Tymoshenko has been using for his own purposes a Chevrolet Tahoe donated for evacuating civilians from combat zones.
Tymoshenko has argued that he used it to travel to deoccupied regions.
Several Ukrainian media have reported recently that Tymoshenko and another deputy chief of staff for Zelensky, Oleh Tatarov, were about to resign. However, the reports on Tatarov's impending resignation have not been confirmed so far.
Tatarov has become the symbol of Zelensky's tolerance of corruption in his inner circle. The president has repeatedly refused to fire or suspend Tatarov.
Tatarov was charged with bribery in 2020. However, the Tatarov case has been obstructed and effectively destroyed by former Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, a Zelensky protege; the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and Ukraine’s corrupt judiciary.
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