KIEV, July 29. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine needs to replace 20,000 policemen in the country’s east, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Tuesday.

Avakov claimed on his Facebook page that almost 20,000 policemen have deserted and discredited themselves in east Ukraine and have to be replaced.

Avakov also said his other concern is the need to replace those police who have failed lie detector tests.

Avakov said in early March that 90% of the Interior Ministry’s senior staff had been dismissed. He wrote on his Facebook page that “90% of the Interior Ministry’s senior officials both in the center and locally had been dismissed as a result of purging, mostly the ministry’s heads who had discredited themselves in the past three months.”

Meanwhile, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court arrested Avakov in absentia in early July on suspicion of his complicity in using “prohibited means and methods of conducting a war” in east Ukraine.

Russia also arrested in absentia Ukrainian billionaire Igor Kolomoiskiy who is actively financing the so-called “anti-terrorist operation” of the Ukrainian army against local self-defense militia in east Ukraine.