Zelensky dismisses regional head following deadly Russian missile strike on Sumy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has dismissed Volodymyr Artyukh, the head of the military administration in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, following the deadly Russian missile strike on the regional capital Sumy on Sunday, Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne reported on Tuesday.

The Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers approved the dismissal of Artyukh and approved the appointment of Oleh Hryhorov, the former head of the National Police in the Luhansk region, as his replacement.

Artyukh’s dismissal comes in the wake of the Russian missile attack on Sumy on Sunday, which killed at least 35 people and injured 129 more.

Hours after the attack, Artem Semenikhin, the mayor of Konotop, a city in the Sumy region, accused Artyukh of organising a military award ceremony and gathering Ukrainian servicemen from the 117th Brigade in Sumy on the same day as the strike.

Artyukh admitted in a comment to Suspilne on Monday that a military award ceremony was due to be held in Sumy on Sunday, but denied any responsibility for the organisation of the event. Artyukh did not specify whether the ceremony had gone ahead or not.

On Sunday, Maryana Bezuhla, a member of the Ukrainian parliament known for her criticism of the Armed Forces of Ukraine leadership, suggested that Sumy had been targeted after information about the award ceremony had been leaked to Russian forces.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement on Monday that it had struck “a meeting of the Siversk operational-tactical group’s command staff” and accused Ukraine of “using the Ukrainian population as a human shield, placing military objects and conducting military events in the centre of a densely populated city”.

Neither Zelensky’s office nor the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have commented on the award ceremony reports.

Ukrainian military experts Ivan Stupak and Roman Svitan both told Novaya Gazeta Europe that the Russian attack on the city constituted a war crime whether or not a gathering of servicemen was in fact taking place there at the time of the strike, as Russia had used indiscriminate cluster munitions in a densely populated city.