Ukraine’s parliament is expected to vote on the resignation of the country’s prosecutor-general on September 15 after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged his quick removal amid rising tensions over a series of high-profile anti-corruption investigations.
Ruslan Kravchenko submitted his resignation last week saying he did not want his position to be used “as a tool for political confrontation” after anti-corruption investigators homed in on an embezzlement scheme connected to a top official in his office.
On September 14, he said he had signed a “suspicion notice” against the head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), one of the bodies investigating his office. NABU said in a statement on its Telegram channel that the move was “a continuation of a systemic attack on independent anti-corruption bodies.”
“There is only one path for this Prosecutor-General: removal from office. That is what I told him,” Zelenskyy said in a post on social media.
“Ukraine has seen all the reasons why. If he considers this political pressure, he is free to call it that. I ask parliamentarians to support his removal without delay.”
The controversy around Kravcenko, who said on September 14 that he is currently outside the country on a business-related trip, is the latest in a swirl of corruption allegations and investigations that have cast a pall over Zelenskyy’s government.
A top Zelenskyy aide, Andriy Yermak, was forced to resign last year as investigators probed a scheme involving hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks from contractors to the state nuclear company, Energoatom.
Mykhaylo Fedorov, who served as defense minister until he was forced out in July, has publicly and loudly complained about corruption in the defense sector, in what many observers saw as an open challenge to Zelenskyy.
The top general overseeing Ukraine’s military, General Oleksandr Syrskiy, with whom Fedorov had clashed, was later pushed out.
Zelenskyy has not been implicated in the scandals, which earlier resulted in the resignations or firing of justice and energy ministers.
In July, Zelenskyy also shook up his entire government, pushing out Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko and replacing her with the head of state energy company Naftogaz. He also replaced the country’s ambassador to Washington, who faces her own graft allegations.
But the scandals have tarnished Zelenskyy’s popularity, and several opinion polls show him trailing several prominent public figures.
Foremost among them is Valeriy Zaluzhniy, the former top general and commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s military. He is now serving as as Kyiv’s ambassador to London.
