Ukraine’s parliament has approved the appointment of a new Interior Minister and head of the Security Service.
The new Interior Minister is Ihor Klymenko, formerly the National Police Chief. He had been serving as acting minister after Denis Monastyrsky, the former Interior Minister, was killed last month in a helicopter crash in the outskirts of Kyiv.
Vasyl Maliuk is the new head of the State Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). He had been serving as acting SBU chief since last July, when President Volodymyr Zelensky suspended the previous SBU chief, Ivan Bakanov, over the presence of Russian collaborators in the SBU. Bakanov was not personally accused of wrongdoing. While he touted the SBU’s successes in countering Russia’s invasion, he admitted “there were also failures.”
Zelensky on Tuesday praised Maliuk for his work protecting Ukraine so far during the Russian invasion. "I believe that such appointments correspond to the meaning and tasks of this stage of the war. Vasyl Maliuk is a combat officer who, from the first minutes of the full-scale invasion, stood up for the defense of the state of Ukraine and performs his work with absolute dedication and professionalism. During the actual management of the Security Service of Ukraine, Vasyl Maliuk proved that the SBU can be the way the people of Ukraine want to see it," Zelensky said, speaking to the Ukrainian parliament.
Zelensky added that the SBU carries out "successful and often truly unique special operations" and some of these operations "changed the picture of the war in favor of Ukraine." Zelensky said "heavy blows" were inflicted on the "internal enemy" and this is reflected in the decisions of the National Security Council.
Parliament also extended martial law in the country, as it has regularly done since Russia’s invasion nearly one year ago.Ukraine has removed millions of books from libraries in "de-Russification" effort
Ukraine has removed millions of books from public libraries in its ongoing effort at “de-Russification,” according to Ukraine’s parliament.
“There were guidelines to withdraw books of authors who supported armed Russia’s aggression against Ukraine,” said Yevheniya Kravchuk, a Ukrainian MP who is deputy head of the Parliamentary Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy.
“There is a list of such authors who were sanctioned. Overall, the proportion of books in Ukrainian and in Russian in libraries is quite regrettable. Which is why we are now talking about the need to renew the collections and purchase books in Ukrainian as soon as possible,” she added.
As of November last year, 19 million books had been removed from public libraries following an initiative from the Ministry of Culture to withdraw “certain types of books.”
The parliament said that 44% of books in public libraries are still in Russian, with the rest in Ukrainian and other languages.