Why did the Prosecutor General of Ukraine resign and who will replace him?

The formal reason for the resignation of Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin on October 22 was the ongoing major corruption scandal involving hundreds of prosecutors who received disability benefits, including financial support, the ability to evade military conscription and leave the country at will.

A crucial question is whether Kostin’s resignation will solve the problem of fake disability documents and corruption in the prosecutor’s office in general, and whether his replacement will be any better.

Some anti-corruption activists see him as a scapegoat to blame for the scandal.

“The resignation was supposed to ease public tension,” Olena Shcherban, deputy executive director of the Kyiv-based NGO Anti-Corruption Action Center, told the Kyiv Independent. “But will it solve the problem? We’re still a long way from that.”

“The resignation was supposed to ease public tension. But will it solve the problem? We’re still a long way from that.”

Several experts have also mentioned other reasons that could have led to Kostin’s firing, aside from the ongoing scandal.

Although Kostin was nominated for the job as a loyalist to President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2022, the Office of the President may have been unhappy with the prosecutor’s decision to green-light corruption cases against lawmakers from the president’s party, according to Shcherban and Yury Nikolov, an investigative journalist who has exposed top-level corruption.

According to Oleksandr Lemenov, head of StateWatch, the president’s office has also been unhappy with Kostin’s frequent trips abroad.

Lemenov and Nikolov also said, citing their sources, that Kostin had allegedly wanted to resign.

“I think he was already leaving and hoping to get an ambassadorial position in The Hague,” a source familiar with decision-making in Zelensky’s office told the Kyiv Independent.

In general, experts polled by the Kyiv Independent see Kostin’s track record as mixed.

On the one hand, they say that he has not achieved great success, and that there has been no effort to reform the corrupt prosecutor’s office.

On the other hand, Kostin did not block or sabotage any high-profile cases, they argue.

Kostin’s spokeswoman, Nadiya Maksimets, told the Kyiv Independent that she was not immediately available for comment. The Presidency did not respond to requests for comment.

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Reasons for resignation

Kostin’s resignation came amid reports of prosecutors illegally obtaining disability status en masse.

Kostin said on October 20 that in Khmelnytskyi Oblast alone, 61 prosecutors had obtained disability certificates.

The head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Vasyl Maliuk, said on October 22 that the SBU had exposed corruption schemes at the medical examination commissions in 2024, which led to the cancellation of 4,106 fake disability status certificates.

Kostin submitted his resignation after a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) chaired by Zelensky.

During the meeting, the “immoral situation” with the false disabilities of prosecutors was discussed and “many shameful facts of abuse” were revealed, according to Kostin.

“I am grateful to the President of Ukraine and the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for their trust. But in this situation, I think it is right that I resign from the post of Prosecutor General,” he said.

Kostin’s resignation has not yet been approved by the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.

Shcherban of the Anti-Corruption Action Center said Kostin had become a scapegoat accused by authorities of the fake disability certificate scandal.

Kostin had become a scapegoat accused by the authorities of the scandal with fake disability certificates.

He said the problem of prosecutors engaging in such corrupt practices had existed long before Kostin.

“It is the result of systemic problems and the unwillingness to reform the prosecutor’s office,” he told the Kyiv Independent. “The reform of the prosecution has failed”.

Shcherban added that former Attorney General Ruslan Riaboshapka’s previous efforts to scrutinize prosecutors and fire those who did not meet standards of integrity and professionalism stalled after he was fired in 2020.

Nikolov, who has investigated corruption in the defense ministry and law enforcement, dismissed the decision to blame Kostin as “populism.”

“Kostin is not the cause of the problem,” he told the Kyiv Independent.

Nikolov believes that the cause is the corrupt system, and Kostin, however, should have been tasked with reforming the prosecution and firing corrupt prosecutors instead of evading this responsibility.

Another reason for Kostin’s resignation may have been that Kostin did not obstruct corruption investigations, even against those close to the president’s office.

The president’s office may have been unhappy with Kostin authorizing charges for lawmakers from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party brought by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), Shcherban said.

Nikolov also said that, according to his sources, Kostin had rarely communicated with the president’s office and that there had been some tension between him and the president’s office.

The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify this claim.

In August, Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, accused the President’s Office of allowing pro-government lawmaker Artem Dmytryk to flee abroad before he was charged with beating a law enforcement officer and a soldier .

Another Servant of the People lawmaker, Andriy Odarchenko, fled Ukraine through Zakarpattia Oblast in September before being charged with bribery. Odarchenko has admitted to being friends with Viktor Mykyta, former governor of Zakarpattia Oblast and currently deputy head of the president’s office.

The Attorney General had been blamed for allowing this to happen.

Another source of tension between Kostin and the president’s office may have been his frequent trips abroad, according to Lemenov.

Kostin spent 103 days on business trips abroad in 2023, Ukrainska Pravda news outlet reported in April, citing Kostin’s asset declaration, law enforcement sources and a response to a official request of legislator Oleksiy Honcharenko.

He spent half of the trips in the United States, where his wife lives, according to the media outlet.

Read also: Andriy Kostin was appointed Prosecutor General. Here’s what we know about him

Kostin's track record

Anti-corruption activists say Kostin’s track record as attorney general remains spotty.

“I don’t see big hits or big failures (with Kostin),” Shcherban said.

The advantage is that Kostin did not block the NABU cases, in contrast to his predecessor Iryna Venediktova, according to Shcherban and Nikolov. Shcherban said that “Kostin was concerned about his reputation among international partners.”

Venediktova has denied the accusations of sabotage.

One of Kostin’s achievements that the Attorney General’s Office itself has highlighted is the investigation of Russian war crimes.

Yury Belousov, head of the Prosecutor General’s Office’s war crimes department, said in early October that 708 Russian soldiers had been charged with war crimes since the start of the large-scale invasion, and 131 of them they had been convicted.

Lemenov was more skeptical, arguing that “anyone would be considered more effective if compared to Venediktova.” He called Kostin a “hidden or shadow prosecutor” because of his alleged inactivity.

“Two years and three months have passed (since Kostin was appointed prosecutor general),” Lemenov said. “Whether he was there or not makes no difference.”

Lemenov added that Kostin had appointed him to several commissions of inquiry, but that the attorney general had made no effort to reform or fix the impasse in Ukraine’s prosecution.

Before being appointed attorney general, Kostin applied for the post of chief anti-corruption prosecutor in 2021-2022.

Several civic bodies, such as the Anticorruption Action Center, AutoMaidan, Dejure and Transparency International, then concluded that Kostin did not meet the standards of ethics and integrity and violated the principle of political neutrality. Watchdogs saw him as too close to Zelensky and his administration.

Finally, he was vetoed by a group of international experts and did not get the job.

The group based its veto on allegations of nepotism and alleged violations of Kostin’s asset declarations. He denied the allegations of wrongdoing.

Kostin has also been criticized for visiting Russian-occupied Crimea in 2015 and 2018. He argued that he had visited a doctor on the occupied peninsula.

Read also: A senior Ukrainian anti-corruption official was fired due to pressure on the whistleblower

No clear successor yet

Regardless of Kostin’s track record, “the crucial question is who will replace him,” Shcherban said.

There is a high probability that his successor will be worse and less independent than Kostin, he added.

There is a high probability that his successor will be worse and less independent than Kostin.

Nikolov said his resignation would only make sense if Kostin was replaced by an effective attorney general who would reform the prosecutor’s office and fire those responsible for violations.

According to Shcherban, potential candidates reportedly being considered as a replacement for Kostin include Odesa Oblast Governor Oleh Kiper and Kyiv Oblast Governor Ruslan Kravchenko.

NV, a Ukrainian media outlet, also reported on October 23, citing its sources in the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Verkhovna Rada, that Kravchenko could replace Kostin.

Shcherban said Kravchenko and Kiper are seen as loyalists of the president’s office, and Kiper has a controversial reputation.

Kiper has been embroiled in a corruption scandal following the publication of an investigation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Schemes project on 23 October. Kiper’s alleged protégés and business partners have acquired assets belonging to a sanctioned Russian businessman, Schemes has reported.

Kiper denied having business ties with them.

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