Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has defended his decision to dismiss the country’s popular defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, and confirmed reports that relations had broken down between the ministry and the country’s top army leadership.
Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, Zelenskyy said there had been a “challenging dialogue” between Fedorov – widely seen as a reformist and moderniser – and the military’s commander in chief, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi.
“I would very much like to see unity. The sides have not found it. And the problem lies not only with the sides, but with me as well,” Zelenskyy said. “But things are as they are. And in such a situation, you have a choice: either one side or the other.”
He has appointed the acting head of Ukraine’s security service, Yevhenii Khmara, as acting defence minister and asked parliament to approve him in the position.



As right-wing governments across Latin America embrace increasingly militarised and technology-driven approaches to organised crime, Israel...
Yemen's Houthi fighters' rapid advance along the Red Sea coast has put them in a prime...
The National Weather Service has begun the work of renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America in...
The UK's new sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements include those in the occupied Golan Heights as...





























