EditUkraine investigates how its top prosecutor wrote himself a ticket out of the country
Ruslan Kravchenko left after clashing with anti-corruption agencies. His own office is now asking whether the “official trip” was legal
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office has opened an internal investigation into how former Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko arranged his own official trip abroad – the journey he used to leave the country in the middle of a confrontation with Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption agencies.
The inquiry was ordered on 22 September by Acting Prosecutor General Anton Kovalskyi, according to office spokeswoman Mariana Haiovska. Investigators are checking whether the trip was properly authorised and whether anyone helped Kravchenko leave in a way that broke internal rules. Decisions will follow if violations are found.
The episode is not only about one official crossing a border. It is the latest round in a long struggle over who polices corruption in a country at war.
Who Kravchenko is
Ruslan Kravchenko became prosecutor general in June 2025. The post is Ukraine’s most powerful prosecutorial job: the Office of the Prosecutor General (OGP) oversees most criminal cases, including war crimes, and can influence whether investigations move or stall. Kravchenko had earlier run the Bucha district prosecutor’s office, which handled war-crimes work after the 2022 Russian occupation of the Kyiv suburbs. He was widely seen as close to the presidential administration.
He lasted about 15 months.
Why he fell: Operation Carthage
On 4 September 2026, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) announced Operation Carthage. They said they had uncovered a criminal group inside the Prosecutor General’s Office that protected fraudulent call centres – industrial-scale phone and online scams, often targeting foreigners with fake investments or romance schemes – and laundered the proceeds.
Detectives searched OGP premises. The first high-profile detainee was Serhii Kropyva, a senior official in the office’s international legal cooperation department, referred to in leaked recordings as “Chancellor.” Investigators alleged the group decided which call centres to shield and which to raid, collected monthly protection fees of about $20,000–$24,000, and converted the money into real estate, cars, and jewellery. Five people were named as suspects. Kravchenko denied any personal involvement and said the court warrants contained no proof that he had ordered protection, leaked raids, or taken money.
NABU and SAPO are Ukraine’s main independent anti-corruption bodies. NABU investigates high-level graft; SAPO prosecutes those cases in the High Anti-Corruption Court. They were created after the 2014 Maidan revolution precisely so that ordinary prosecutors and politicians could not bury elite corruption cases. Tension between them and the Prosecutor General’s Office is a recurring feature of Ukrainian politics.
Resignation, counterattack, then the border
After the searches, Kravchenko submitted his resignation around 7–8 September. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accepted the political logic of a departure but the formal process still had to go through parliament.
Ukraine’s top prosecutor quits as corruption probe piles up pressure on Zelenskyy
On 14 September, before he was fully out of office, Kravchenko went on the offensive. He said he had signed a notice of suspicion against NABU Director Semen Kryvonos, accusing him of forging official documents for unlawful gain and of a sham adoption meant to help him evade accountability. He also said a person close to SAPO head Oleksandr Klymenko was suspected of trying to influence anti-corruption court judges, offering them illicit benefits, and helping someone dodge mobilisation. Kravchenko claimed the Carthage searches were really an attempt to seize files his office was building against NABU and SAPO staff.
NABU later said Kryvonos never received any such notice. Relatives of Klymenko likewise said they had not been served. The Prosecutor General’s Office itself later stated that, in the relevant case, no one had been notified of suspicion in the manner required by law.
That same night, Kravchenko left Ukraine.
The “business trip”
He said he was traveling on official business to brief international partners on the “real state of affairs” in the anti-corruption system. Paperwork associated with the trip has been described in conflicting ways: Lithuania, a Council of Europe hearing in Paris about Ukrainian children, Brussels. What is not in dispute is that he crossed the Polish border at the Shehyni–Medyka checkpoint in the early hours of 14 September.
Initial reports said he used an official car. The Prosecutor General’s Office later said no OGP vehicles were used between 13 and 14 September. Ukrainska Pravda, citing sources, reported he left in a premium taxi. His wife had already crossed the border two days earlier, via Moldova, according to the same reporting.
Under martial law, most Ukrainian men aged roughly 23 to 60 cannot leave the country. Officials can travel on documented duty. That exception is why the paperwork matters. If the trip was self-authorized, sloppily authorized, or used as cover to exit after a political collapse, it is both a bureaucratic violation and a political scandal.
Zelenskyy reacted the same day: he called on parliament to dismiss Kravchenko and suspended him from duty. On 15 September the Verkhovna Rada voted him out; Zelenskyy signed the decree that evening. On 17 September he appointed Anton Kovalskyi, previously the Khmelnytskyi regional prosecutor, as acting prosecutor general.
The trip Kravchenko had written for himself was due to end on 18 September. He did not return to work. He later submitted a resignation from the prosecutor’s service altogether, which Kovalskyi signed on 21 September – a faster route than a lengthy disciplinary process that would have left him formally on the books.
What the new investigation is for
Haiovska said the internal inquiry will examine whether the trip was processed and carried out according to the rules, and what circumstances “could have contributed to possible violations.” In plain terms: Did the outgoing prosecutor general write himself an exit ticket, and did anyone in the office help him do it?
That is the narrow question. The wider one, for Ukrainians and for the governments that fund Kyiv’s war effort, is whether the country’s anti-corruption architecture can police the prosecutor’s office itself – and whether a senior official can walk out of a scandal on a piece of paper he signed.
Ukraine’s outgoing prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko leaves country amid anti-corruption clash ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/tiNR1t5dEW
— TVP World (@TVPWorld_com) September 14, 2026
This article draws on reporting by EUalive’s partner Suspilne.
Caption: Screenshot from video by TVP World [EUalive]
Updated: September 25, 2026 - 13:30
