Dan Peleschuk

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's powerful chief of staff Andriy Yermak, a close ally who has headed Ukraine's negotiation team at fraught U.S.-backed peace talks, quit on Friday, hours after anti-corruption agents searched his home.

Investigators in Ukraine could bring new charges in a sweeping probe into high-level graft that has fuelled the country's worst wartime political crisis, the country's top anti-corruption officer said on Tuesday.

Ukrainian lawmakers fired two ministers ensnared in a major corruption probe on Wednesday and called for more sweeping measures to restore faith in the country's leadership as the scandal provokes the country's biggest wartime political crisis.

Standing near the mangled exterior of his thermal power plant, the 53-year-old production manager described the now familiar job of a Ukrainian energy worker: swiftly patching up the workplace during another season of intense Russian air strikes.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for the dismissal of two cabinet ministers on Wednesday amid a probe into an alleged $100 million corruption scheme involving a former associate that has fuelled fresh public anger at Kyiv's wartime government.

Ukraine's top general said Kyiv's troops were stepping up assaults on Russian forces around the eastern Ukrainian town of Dobropillia to ease pressure on the embattled hub of Pokrovsk.

Ukraine's entire eastern Donetsk region was without power after recent Russian attacks on energy infrastructure forced emergency power outages, the regional governor said on Sunday.

Ukrainian forces are struggling to fend off intensifying Russian advances on the eastern city of Pokrovsk, the military and open-source analysts said on Wednesday.

Ukraine is introducing emergency power cuts in all but two regions following a spate of Russian strikes that have hobbled the country's energy system, officials said on Wednesday.

A Ukrainian delegation led by Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko will visit Washington for talks on strengthening Kyiv's defence and energy resilience, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's chief of staff said on Monday.