Facts about Russia-Ukraine conflict: Zelensky dismisses prosecutor general, security chief

BEIJING, July 18 (Xinhua) -- The following are the latest developments in the Ukraine crisis:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on late Sunday that he had decided to dismiss Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova and head of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov, the presidential press service reported.

In his address to the nation, Zelensky blamed Venediktova and Bakanov for insufficiently dealing with a large number of traitors in their agencies.

As of Sunday, Ukrainian authorities had launched 651 criminal proceedings on charges of "treason and collaboration activities" in law enforcement agencies, Zelensky said.

More than 60 employees of the prosecutor's office and the Security Service of Ukraine were "working against our state," he added.

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Russian forces destroyed a depot housing Harpoon anti-ship missiles delivered by NATO countries in Ukraine's important port city of Odessa with high-precision long-range air-based missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday.

It said Russian forces also shot down one Ukrainian MI-17 helicopter near the town of Slavyansk in Donetsk, and one SU-25 warplane of the Ukrainian air force in the Kharkov region.

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The industrial infrastructure of the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv was destroyed after the city was hit probably by S-300 missiles on the night of Saturday to Sunday, but no civilian casualties were reported so far, the Ukrainian government-run Ukrinform news agency said.

Russian forces launched rocket attacks on eight communities in the northeastern Sumy region and one community in the northern Chernihiv region on Saturday, the State Border Service of Ukraine said on Facebook on Sunday.