Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that he has fired Kharkiv’s top security services officer. The decision was taken after the officer failed to work hard on the city’s defense.

“I came, understood, and fired the head of the Security Service of Ukraine of the [Kharkiv] region for the fact that he did not work on the defense of the city from the first days of the full-scale war, but thought only about himself,” Zelenskiy said in his daily address.

“On which motives? The law enforcement officers will figure it out,” he added.

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However, Zelensky did not provide details or mention the name of the fired security chief.

He said that local officials “have 100 percent cooperation: the army, the police, the mayor of Kharkiv, the regional state administration. All work for victory and do it very effectively.”

“Unfortunately, this cannot be said about the local leadership of the Security Service of Ukraine,” he said. 

Zelenskiy made the announcement hours after visiting the northeastern Ukrainian city which has come under threat of Russian invasion since the conflict began on February 24.

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The president met with the governor of Kharkiv region and the mayor of the city to discuss reconstruction programmes for the region.

“This is a chance for such districts to have a new face,” Zelenskiy said.

“In this war, the occupiers are trying to squeeze out at least some result,” Zelensky said in a later post. “But they should have understood long ago that we will defend our land to the last man. They have no chance. We will fight and we will definitely win.”

After three months of full-scale war against Ukraine, the focus of the current phase of the conflict is back on the region where Russia has been fighting Ukraine for the past eight years: Donbas.

“The overall military balance in this war still trends in Ukraine’s favour, given manpower availability and access to extensive Western military support … But the local balance in the Donbas during this phase is a different story,” Military analyst Michael Kofman wrote on Twitter last week.