**Kyiv Mayor Fires Top Officials Amid Corruption Probe**
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, has announced the dismissal of four top officials. This comes as part of a widening corruption probe into land dealings in the capital.
Klitschko made the announcement on Facebook. The officials being fired include Ihor Dolinsky, director of the Kyiv Institute of Land Relations; Volodymyr Sharyi, director of the special housing fund; Viktor Pohrebnoi, director of the Financial Company Zhytloinvest; and Valentina Sviatina, deputy director of the Department of Urban Planning and Architecture.
This is not the first time Klitschko has announced dismissals. On February 28, he fired three other officials: Yurii Leonov, deputy director of the city’s special housing fund; Oleksii Mushta, deputy head of an urban infrastructure management agency; and Petro Olenych, deputy head of the Kyiv City Administration.
**Corruption Probe Widens**
The corruption probe into land dealings in Kyiv has been led by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor‘s Office (SAPO). The agencies have released recordings of Kyiv officials allegedly involved in fraudulent land schemes.
Klitschko said that the city is cooperating with law enforcement officers and facilitating the investigation. He also announced that Mykhailo Terentiev, a member of the Kyiv city council and chairman of the land commission, has resigned from his post as director of the Engineering Center communal enterprise.
**Other Developments**
Ukraine has received the first tranche of 2.5 billion Canadian dollars (about $1.7 billion) from Ottawa under the G7’s Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) initiative.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the Ukrainian government failed to prevent and properly investigate deadly clashes between EuroMaidan supporters and opponents in Odesa in May 2014.
Ukrainian air defenses shot down 74 of the 117 drones launched by Russia overnight over 11 regions.