The sidelining of Ukraine's domestic spy chief on Sunday laid bare Kyiv's battle far from the front lines to purge its powerful security agencies of collaborators and Russian agents.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suspended Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) chief Ivan Bakanov, a childhood friend, and top state prosecutor Iryna Venediktova, citing dozens of cases of collaboration by members of their agencies in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
Zelenskyy singled out the case of Oleh Kulinich, a senior SBU official appointed under Bakanov to focus on Russian-annexed Crimea who was arrested on suspicion of treason on Saturday. He had been sacked shortly after Russia's Feb. 24 invasion.