Ukraine's parliament dismissed Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko on Sept. 15, a week after he resigned and a day after he announced that he had approved charges against the head of the country's anti-corruption bureau, the Kyiv Independent reports.
The dismissal, which passed without a single vote against it, comes amid a confrontation between Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies and the Prosecutor General's Office, which is facing a National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) investigation into an alleged criminal group that protected scam call centers and helped launder millions of hryvnias.
NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) said Kravchenko's announcement about the charges against NABU chief Semen Kryvonos was part of a broader effort to undermine the independence of the anti-corruption agencies.
Late on Sept. 14, the Prosecutor General's Office posted a statement that seemed to signal division between the agency and its outgoing boss. The statement claimed the reported charges were "not true" but also "canceled" — by whose authority, it remains unclear.
Just before the vote, Kravchenko urged lawmakers not to vote under "pressure," while stressing that he "has not signed any politically motivated procedural decision" against them.
"I did not sign a single politically motivated procedural decision, neither regarding representatives of the opposition nor members of the ruling political party," he said.
Ukraine's Prosecutor General is required to sign notices of suspicion against lawmakers before they can be formally charged with a crime.
Kravchenko, who was long seen as a staunch loyalist of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, resigned Sept. 7 following a meeting with the president and amid the corruption controversy.
Follow us on Telegram
t.me/apanewsaz
Follow us on Instagram
Follow us on TikTok
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on X
