Zelensky orders purge of Ukraine state guard after alleged assassination plots

Volodymyr Zelensky has ordered the new head of Ukraine's State Guard to purge his ranks after two of his officers were accused of planning to assassinate senior officials.

The State Security Service (SBU) said last month it had arrested two Guards colonels accused of cooperating with Russia to plot the assassination of Ukraine's president, military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov and other officials.

Mr Zelensky on Monday introduced the new head of Ukraine's State Guard, Colonel Oleksiy Morozov, and said his main task was to ensure that only those who see their future linked to Ukraine can join the agency.

He said on Telegram: “And, of course, the agency must be rid of anyone who does not choose Ukraine for themselves or who discredits state guard services. » The guard service provides security for various government officials.

Mr. Zelensky fired Mr. Morozov's predecessor, Serhiy Rud, in May, two days after the SBU arrested agency employees who he said worked for Russia's Federal Security Service and leaked information classified. Moscow has made no comment on the allegations.

Separately, Russian missiles killed at least four people and injured 34 others, including two children, in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk on Monday, regional governor Vadym Filashkin said.

“This is one of the largest enemy attacks on civilians in recent times,” Vadym Filashkin said on Telegram.

Photos shared alongside his post showed single-story buildings with broken windows, damaged roofs and scattered debris.

Mr. Filashkin said Russian troops launched two Iskander-M ballistic missiles at the town located about 24 kilometers (15 miles) from the front line. The attack destroyed a private house and damaged 16 others, he added.

A missile struck before, half an hour later, a second, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office said in a statement. The attacks also damaged a gas pipeline and cars, the statement added.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin directly blamed the United States for an attack on Crimea with U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles that killed at least four people and injured 151.

Moscow formally warned the American ambassador that retaliation would follow.

Blaming the United States for a deadly attack on Crimea – which Russia annexed in 2014 and now considers part of its territory, even though most of the world considers it part of Ukraine – is a no more than the Kremlin has done before.

“You should ask my colleagues in Europe, and especially in Washington, the press secretaries, why their governments are killing Russian children. Just ask them this question,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters about the attack.

At least two children were killed in the Sevastopol attack on Sunday, according to Russian officials. People were shown fleeing a beach near Sevastopol and some of the injured were taken to deck chairs.

Russia said the United States supplied the weapons, while American military specialists pointed the weapons and provided data on them.

In Moscow, two people jumped from the top floors of a burning eight-story former Russian electronics research institute on Monday.

At least six other people died in the fire, the official TASS news agency reported. Black smoke billowed from the building outside Moscow and flames rose up its walls. Some people were trapped on the upper floors but were unable to escape.

A man was shown jumping from the upper floor of the building on the Baza Telegram channel. Another, seriously burned, fell from the upper floors, images published by the Shot Telegram channel showed.

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.

The EU has agreed to use €1.4bn (£1.2bn) of profits from frozen Russian assets to buy weapons and other aid for Ukraine.

EU governments had already decided in May to use profits from frozen EU assets to help Ukraine, with 90 percent of the funds earmarked for military aid.

But Hungary, which has warmer relations with Moscow, is slow to approve the necessary legal measures, diplomats say.

Hungary is not giving weapons to Ukraine and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has criticized other EU and NATO members for the decision, saying they are fueling the war.

At a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday, foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the usual unanimity for foreign policy decisions was not needed as Hungary had withdrawn previous decisions that underpinned the project.

“Since Hungary did not participate in the decision, there is no need for Hungary to participate in its implementation,” Borrell told reporters upon arrival at the meeting.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto did little while Mr. Borrell outlined the plan, they said.

Additional reporting by agencies