Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has said he hopes courts will make less lenient rulings on pretrial confinement for key suspects among tax officials arrested on May 24 during a massive anti-corruption special operation. Several of those arrested have already been released on bail.

"I hope today's court sessions dealing with key suspects in the case will be much more objective. If not, then we will have to sit down with the head of Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) and come up with different plans," Avakov told journalists in Kyiv on Thursday.

"We will appeal to ordinary Ukrainians for support," the minister said, adding that bail amounts set for several of the suspects was too low.

As earlier reported, on Wednesday morning law-enforcement officials arrested former tax officials in 15 Ukrainian regions. The former officials worked under ex-minister of income and taxes Oleksandr Klymenko [who fled Ukraine to Russia following the Revolution of Dignity in 2013/14].

Kyiv's Pechersky court on Wednesday selected pretrial restrictions in the form of bail for five former heads of Ukrainian tax agencies who were detained as part of the crackdown: former head of Luhansk region's tax service Oleksandr Antipov, former head of Poltava region's tax service Volodymyr Zadorozhniy, former head of Kyiv's Sviatoshynsky district tax office Yuriy Mostipan, former head of the tax office in Kyiv's Podilsky district Oleksiy Yaroshenko, and former head of the tax office in Kyiv's Darnytsky district Yuriy Kravchenko. The rulings on Antipov and Zadorozhniy have been appealed.