KYIV (Reuters) -Several senior Ukrainian officials resigned on Tuesday in the biggest leadership shakeup of the war with Russia so far, in what an aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called an answer to public calls for “justice”.

Some, though not all, of the resignations were linked with corruption allegations. Ukraine has a history of graft and shaky governance, and is under international pressure to show it can be a reliable steward of billions of dollars in Western aid.

“There are already personnel decisions – some today, some tomorrow – regarding officials at various levels in ministries and other central government structures, as well as in the regions and in law enforcement,” Zelenskiy said in an overnight video address.

Zelenskiy aide Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted: “The president sees and hears society. And he directly responds to a key public demand – justice for all.”

Among those stepping down or fired on Tuesday morning were a deputy prosecutor general, a deputy defence minister and the deputy chief of staff in Zelenskiy’s own office.

The changes came two days after a deputy infrastructure minister was arrested and accused of siphoning off $400,000 from contracts to buy generators, one of the first big corruption scandals to become public since the war began 11 months ago.

The Defence Ministry said Deputy Defence Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, responsible for supplying troops, had resigned on Tuesday morning as a “worthy deed” to retain trust, after media accusations of corruption which he and the ministry rejected. It followed a newspaper report that the ministry overpaid for food for troops, which the ministry and its supplier both denied.

The prosecutor’s office announced that Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Symonenko had been removed from office, giving no reason. Symonenko had been under fire in Ukrainian media for taking a holiday in Spain.

Though Zelenskiy did not name any officials in his address, he announced a ban on officials taking holidays abroad.

“Ignoring the war is a luxury no one can afford,” he said. “If they want to rest, they will rest outside the civil service.”

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy chief of staff in Zelenskiy’s office, announced his own resignation, also citing no reason. He had helped run the president’s 2019 election campaign and more recently had a role in overseeing regional policy.

The changes are a rare shakeup of an otherwise notably stable wartime leadership in Kyiv. Apart from purging a spy agency in July, Zelenskiy has mostly stuck with his team, built around fellow political novices the former television actor brought into power when he was elected in a landslide in 2019 promising to root out a corrupt political class.

Kyiv says a surge in patriotic feeling has dampened corruption since Russia’s invasion. But the head of Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party promised on Monday that officials would be arrested in a coming anti-corruption drive, which would resort to martial law if necessary.

‘SPRING WILL BE DECISIVE’

Front lines in the war have been largely frozen in place for two months despite heavy losses on both sides.

Western countries pledged billions of dollars in military aid last week, but have yet to respond to Kyiv’s request for hundreds of heavy battle tanks, which it says it needs to break through Russian lines and recover occupied territory.

Most defence experts say the most suitable tanks available in sufficient numbers are German-made Leopards. But Berlin has so far held back from sending them, or from committing to let allies such as Poland send them.

Germany was not blocking the re-export of Leopard tanks to Ukraine, the European Union’s top diplomat said on Monday.

Ukraine and Russia are both widely believed to be planning spring offensives to break the deadlock in what has become a war of attrition in eastern and southern Ukraine.

“If the major Russian offensive planned for this time fails, it will be the ruin of Russia and Putin,” Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, said in an interview with news site Delfi.

Meanwhile, Russian forces pounded Donetsk in Ukraine’s east. Ukrainian forces repelled 11 attacks, 10 of them in the Donetsk region, including in the areas of the town of Bakhmut and the village of Klishchiivka to the south, Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday.

Last week, Russia said it had captured Klishchiivka. Russian forces have been pressing for months for control of Bakhmut but with limited success.

Reuters could not verify battlefield reports.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year and flattened cities, killing thousands of civilians. Kyiv repelled an initial assault on the capital, recaptured territory in the second half of 2022 and says it aims to drive all Russian troops out.

Moscow claimed last year to have annexed four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces, in addition to Crimea which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Moscow put the chief of its military general staff, Valery Gerasimov, in direct command of the war this month in at least the third shakeup of overall leadership since the invasion.

In his first interview since taking command of the battlefield, Gerasimov stuck to Moscow’s line that its “special military operation” is a form of defence against a threat from the West.

“Our country and its armed forces are today acting against the entire collective West,” he told the news website Argumenty i Fakty.

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Finland’s foreign minister said on Tuesday a time-out of a few weeks was needed in Finland and Sweden’s talks with Turkey on their application to join the NATO military alliance.

Turkey’s president said on Monday that Sweden should not expect his country’s support after a protest near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm at the weekend, which included the burning of a copy of the Koran.

“A time-out is needed before we return to the three-way talks and see where we are when the dust has settled after the current situation, so no conclusions should be drawn yet,” Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“I think there will be a break for a couple of weeks.”

Sweden and Finland applied last year to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after Russia invaded of Ukraine, and now need the backing of all current NATO states to advance their application.

But Turkey has said Sweden in particular must take a clearer stance against what Ankara sees as terrorists: mainly Kurdish militants, and a group it blames for a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Monday announced that presidential and parliamentary elections would be brought forward a month to May 14.

Haavisto said he had spoken on Monday with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

“Of course they feel the pressure from the upcoming elections in mid-May and because of that the discussion understandably has become heated in many ways in Turkey,” Haavisto said.

Finland and Sweden have repeatedly said they plan to join the alliance simultaneously and Haavisto said he saw no reason to consider whether Finland might go it alone.

Russia’s Wagner Group Edges Into Complete Collapse in Ukraine thedailybeast.com/russias-wagner…

Germany’s hesitance and lack of action in assisting the allied support for Ukraine, especially with providing the former with tanks, is disgraceful and will ensure Russia’s war drags on.

President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un talk before a meeting in the Demilitarized Zone on June 30, 2019, in Panmunjom, Korea.

Photo by Brendan Smialowski /AFP via Getty Images

• Trump had to explain to Kim Jong Un that his “Little Rocket Man” nickname was an Elton John reference.
• Kim told him that he didn’t like the “Little” part of the nickname. 
• Pompeo revealed the exchange in his new book, “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love.” 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un didn’t understand the “Little Rocket Man” nickname Donald Trump gave him, so the ex-president took it upon himself to explain it over lunch, says a new book. 

Trump started by asking Kim over a meal at the Singapore summit on June 12, 2018, whether he knew who Elton John was, according to the book “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,” by former Secretary of State and CIA director Mike Pompeo that’s coming out Tuesday. 

When Kim said no, Trump explained that the British singer’s 1972 hit song “Rocket Man” inspired him to give Kim the nickname in 2017. 

“Trump said it was a great song, and he intended the reference as a compliment,” Pompeo wrote. 

Kim and others at the lunch laughed, and Kim said, “‘Rocket man,’ OK. ‘Little,’ not OK.” 

During his 2016 race for the White House, Trump gave many of his opponents catchy nicknames. He called Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas “Lyin’ Ted,” former GOP Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida “Low Energy Jeb,” and Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary.”

Trump first referred publicly to Kim as “Little Rocket Man” on Twitter in 2017 and repeated it at a UN General Assembly speech and throughout his presidency.

Kim had lobbed insults back in Trump’s direction, calling him “a frightened dog” and a “dotard.” Trump shot back with warnings during his presidency that continued threats against the US would be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen” and that his “nuclear button” is “much bigger & more powerful” than that of the North Korean leader. 

But the two men also displayed a public show of affection. Trump later gifted a cassette of the song to Kim and played it for him, he told an audience gathered in Sunrise, Florida, in 2021. Trump shared that he told Kim, “‘I called you Rocketman — that was great — because I could see you, I could envisage you, sitting like you sit on a horse, on a saddle, sitting on a rocket flying over Japan.'” 

The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported in 2018 that Pompeo brought a CD John signed to lunch with Kim after Trump told him to, though that detail doesn’t appear in Pompeo’s book.

Kim and Trump met for the first time at the Singapore summit to discuss denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Pompeo, who is among more than a dozen Republicans who are considering running for president in 2024, recounted the face-to-face in his forthcoming book. 

“I watched from the meeting room and noticed immediately that my North Korean friend wore platform shoes that left him about a foot shorter than President Trump,” he wrote. “At somewhere around five feet five, Chairman Kim could not afford to give an inch — literally.”