The staff of Ukraine’s new President Volodymyr Zelensky made a curious discovery several days after the administration began its term—a situation room where the president meets to discuss national security affairs was void of any equipment.
The newly appointed chairman of the National Security and Defence Council Oleksandr Danylyuk revealed on Tuesday that he found servers had been removed from the office—seemingly before former President Petro Poroshenko left office.
As the Associated Press reported, Danylyuk shared a video of the barren room on Facebook. The video showed power cables protruding from the walls, and unpainted spaces where monitors should have been.
“This is the situation room at the presidential administration, this is what it looks like now,” Danylyuk said in the video, according to AP. “Everything was taken away during the handover of power. This is a civilised handover for you.”
The ex-president’s press secretary Svyatoslav Tsegolko defended Poroshenko on Facebook, claiming that Poroshenko had paid to rent the servers and needed to return the equipment, and that any sensitive information still exists on the servers of various agencies.
The nation’s State Bureau of Investigations stated it will launch an inquiry into the former president’s potential classified data mishandling, according to the AP. The matter could become one of many cases against Poroshenko that the State Bureau of Investigations is involved with.