Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suspended Ruslan Kravchenko from the post of prosecutor general by decree on 14 September. The decree came hours after Kravchenko announced criminal accusations against Semen Kryvonos, director of Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), which is investigating Kravchenko's office.

Zelenskyy's suspension comes amid a conflict between the Prosecutor General's Office and Ukraine's anti-corruption bodies: NABU, which investigates high-level corruption, and SAPO, which prosecutes NABU's cases. Their independence is central to Ukraine's post-Euromaidan reforms and EU accession.

Zelenskyy's decree gave no reason and cited martial-law powers allowing the president to suspend officials appointed under his authority, Censor reported.

Davyd Arakhamia, parliamentary leader of Zelenskyy's Servant of the People party, said lawmakers would vote on 15 September on a submission from Zelenskyy, who urged the Rada to back the dismissal without delay. The law enforcement committee backed it the same afternoon. Kravchenko submitted his resignation on 7 September.

Kravchenko was abroad on what his office called an official trip to a 16 September conference on Ukrainian children in Paris, organized by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Yet a spokesperson for the assembly told the Kyiv Independent that neither Kravchenko nor anyone from his office would take part, and that he would not appear as a speaker or a participant, and Censor's sources say he registered the trip as a business trip to Brussels.

The NGO Anti-Corruption Action Center alleged that he signed the notices in exchange for being let out of the country, and that the trip was possible only with Zelenskyy's permission. It published no evidence.

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What Kravchenko accused anti-corruption officials of

Before his suspension, Kravchenko said he had signed notices of suspicion against Kryvonos, NABU’s director, and an unnamed associate of SAPO head Oleksandr Klymenko.

A notice of suspicion is a formal pretrial accusation that generally confers suspect status upon service of the notice. Kravchenko accused Kryvonos of forging documents to obtain an illicit benefit on an especially large scale and arranging a fictitious adoption to avoid legal liability. The second alleges that the unnamed associate tried to influence anti-corruption judges, offered them bribes, and helped others evade mobilization.

Kravchenko linked the notices to Operation Carthage, claiming NABU and SAPO used its searches to obtain and remove case files concerning their personnel.

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NABU and SAPO rejected the allegations, denied taking files or seeking immunity, and called Kravchenko's actions a continuation of a "systemic attack" on independent anti-corruption agencies. Since Kryvonos had not been served, the agencies described the announcement as public rather than procedural.

What Operation Carthage is investigating

At the center of Operation Carthage is Serhii Kropyva, deputy head of the Prosecutor General's Office international cooperation department, whom NABU and SAPO accuse of running a bribery scheme that protected fraudulent call centers and laundered the proceeds.

Kropyva was remanded in custody with bail set at UAH 120 million ($2.7 million) while NABU and SAPO searched the Prosecutor General's Office premises. NABU has not named Kravchenko as a suspect, and he denies protecting the call centers or receiving criminal proceeds.

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The dispute between Kravchenko and the two agencies also revives a broader struggle over their independence from the prosecutor general. In July 2025, parliament placed NABU and SAPO under greater control by the prosecutor general, triggering Ukraine’s first major wartime street protests and Western pressure before lawmakers restored their formal independence.

The European Commission reiterated on 14 September that both the protection of agencies and the reform of the Prosecutor General’s Office, including the competitive selection of its head, are part of Ukraine’s EU accession commitments.

Ukraine's Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko resigned on 7 September, hours after publicly defending himself, as anti-corruption investigators closed in on an alleged criminal organization operating inside his own office.

"I do not want the position of prosecutor general to be used as an instrument of political confrontation," Kravchenko said, announcing his departure on Telegram. "My position regarding the charges remains unchanged"—a denial he has held throughout, including in a 6 September statement rejecting any role in protecting the call centers.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the resignation on the evening of 7 September. "I had a fairly long meeting with the prosecutor general; he submitted the relevant resignation letter, and the submission will be sent to the Verkhovna Rada," Zelenskyy said, adding that he had spent the day on personnel matters and had also met the heads of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO). The resignation is not final until parliament acts on it.

It reads as a scandal. It is closer to the opposite.

Kravchenko was appointed in June 2025, as the anti-corruption agencies were pressing toward figures close to the president—and his appointment came alongside the draft law, No. 12414, that would have put NABU and SAPO under his control. That law triggered the first street protests since Russia's invasion; within ten days, parliament reversed the part stripping the agencies' independence.

The provisions handing Kravchenko a personnel monopoly over the prosecution service were never repealed.

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Since then, those agencies have forced out Andriy Yermak, the second-most-powerful man in the country. Now they have reached the prosecutor general—whose office kept, even after the capture law was reversed, a personnel monopoly over the prosecution service.

The corruption is not new. What is new is that it is being caught, and that being caught now costs the powerful their offices. The story of the past year is not that Ukraine is coming apart, but that its watchdogs have stopped being toothless.

What Operation Carthage found

On 5 September, NABU and SAPO announced they had uncovered a criminal organization run, investigators say, by a department head inside the Prosecutor General's Office. Its members allegedly took regular bribes from fraudulent call centers—operations that defraud victims in Ukraine and abroad—in exchange for shielding them from prosecution, then laundered the money through property, assets registered to other people, and associates' bank accounts.

The group was formed in mid-2025 and recruited serving prosecutors and associates, NABU and SAPO said. Over 20 million hryvnias (about $449,000) went on property, jewelry, and other high-value assets, according to NABU.

NABU described the organization as run by the head of a department inside the Prosecutor General's Office. Sources told Ukrainska Pravda that the official is Serhii Kropyva, deputy head of the office's International Legal Cooperation Department. He was remanded in custody on 6 September with bail set at 120 million hryvnias (about $2.7 million).

In recordings released by NABU, a figure using the codename "Chancellor," reported to be Kropyva, is described as protected by a "boss." Two details identify that boss: the patronymic "Andriiovych," and a previous job leading the State Tax Service. Ruslan Andriiovych Kravchenko ran the State Tax Service from December 2024 until he became prosecutor general in June 2025. The investigation understands the "boss" to be Kravchenko, the Kyiv Independent reported.

NABU has not publicly named Kravchenko as a suspect. He denies instructing anyone to protect illegal call centers or using his office to shield them. He resigned nonetheless.

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The searches, and the surveillance files

NABU searches also reached the offices of Kravchenko himself, his deputy Mariia Vdovychenko, and the head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration, Oleh Kiper. Kravchenko defended the handling of those searches at a 7 September press conference—the same day he resigned.

The investigation into the Prosecutor General's Office is the latest in a widening confrontation between Ukraine's anti-corruption bodies and the institutions around the presidency. When NABU announced the case, it described a senior official running a criminal ring from inside the office meant to prosecute exactly such crimes.

Why it matters

The Prosecutor General's Office is one of the institutions Kyiv relies on to supervise—and, critics say, to restrain—NABU's investigations into figures close to the president. That an investigation reached the prosecutor general himself is a measure of how far the anti-corruption bodies have pushed against that restraint, not a sign they have failed.

It caps a run of accountability cases since July 2025 that would have been unthinkable earlier in the war.

In June 2025, NABU charged Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov—the only official at Zelenskyy's private birthday during lockdown—with a $24 million land scheme, the first case to reach the president's "family."

The attempt to capture the agencies came weeks later, and failed: in November, Operation Midas exposed a $100 million scheme that forced out Zelenskyy's chief of staff and two ministers, one of them later detained at the border. Other resonant cases include Operation Forest Gump, targeting officials inside the President's Office. Now Carthage has reached the prosecutor general himself.

The pattern that looks like a government in crisis is also a state where stealing at the top is no longer safe—and where the public has twice in a year come into the streets over how power is used: in July 2025 to defend NABU and SAPO, and in July 2026 for a sacked minister.

Kravchenko took office in June 2025. He is the second prosecutor general to leave under a cloud in three years, after Andriy Kostin.

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