New political turmoil in Kyiv as prosecutor general resigns
The new turmoil confronting Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, comes after a shootout between Ukraine’s SBU and GUR security and intelligence services. Picture: (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Ukraine's prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, has resigned amid corruption accusations that saw anti-graft officers search his offices at the weekend as part of investigations into illegal call centres.
Kravchenko has rejected any allegations against him, calling them “completely unsubstantiated” and denying wrongdoing.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) and Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (Sapo) announced on Saturday that they had uncovered a money-laundering scheme “led by an official in the prosecutor general’s office” and had conducted raids there.
According to investigators, a corrupt network received money to protect call centres that carried out phone scams and “laundered fortunes amounting to millions”.
Nabu published images of a safe filled with bundles of dollar bills, saying it uncovered five members behind the scheme, without naming them.
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A deputy of Kravchenko has been remanded in custody on suspicion of money laundering in connection with the case.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2025 faced protests that forced him to reverse efforts to make Nabu and Sapo subordinate to the national prosecutor’s office.
According to the Swiss-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime (GI-TOC), illegal call centres employ about 60,000 people in Ukraine. On Monday, Kravchenko posted: “I have submitted my resignation as prosecutor general. I do not want the office of prosecutor general to be used as a tool in political confrontation. My position regarding the charges remains unchanged.”
The new turmoil confronting Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, comes after a shootout between Ukraine’s SBU and GUR security and intelligence services. Kyiv is also bedding in new military leadership after Zelenskyy sacked the defence minister and was then forced by protests to sack Ukraine’s military commander-in-chief as well because of feuding between the pair.
Russia resumed it's attacks on Kyiv, Ukraine’s emergency service said late on Monday, as air raid alerts were issued in more than a dozen regions. It came after the expiration of a three-day halt in attacks while US envoys visited the Ukrainian capital and Moscow.
Kyiv’s city military administration said at least two people were killed and seven wounded. The strikes damaged buildings across Kyiv, including a five-storey apartment block in the Solomianskyi district, while vehicles caught fire in the Podilskyi district.
“Russians attacked Boryspil and Fastiv districts with drones,” the emergency service said. Social media channels monitoring air threats on Ukraine said Moscow’s forces had started to transport ballistic missiles and relocate heavy bombers from Russia’s east to airfields closer to Ukraine.
Russia “does not rule out the resumption of the trilateral format”, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, referring to possible talks involving the Russians, Ukrainians and the US. “But it is too early to say anything about the venue or the exact dates at this stage,” Peskov added. US negotiators told European representatives during talks in Kyiv that Russia was showing a “new willingness” to negotiate over the Ukraine war, the French presidency said on Monday.
“The Americans told us that there was a new willingness on the part of Russia to negotiate following the Duma [Russian lower house] elections, and we should prepare for a fresh start to the negotiations,” said an aide to Emmanuel Macron, the French president. Donald Trump’s administration, though, has repeatedly construed Putin’s willingness to meet US representatives and reel off his unaltered maximalist demands as a willingness to negotiate.
Ukraine struck a Russian oil refinery in the Ryazan region, as well as oil-processing facilities in the Perm region and Tatarstan, Zelenskyy said on Monday. Both attacks were confirmed by regional governors – in Perm the governor said one person was killed and four others were injured when one of the drones damaged a residential building.
A Russian attack damaged a British American Tobacco plant in the town of Pryluky in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region with no known injuries, BAT Ukraine’s press office said.
Off-site power at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in south-eastern Ukraine has been restored via the Ferosplavna power line, according to Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear corporation that is illegally in control of the power station. The plant had been without external power since 20 August and reliant on emergency diesel generators for cooling of its nuclear fuel. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that repairs were completed during a ceasefire that it brokered.
Latvia’s government plans to impose a 300% tariff on grain arriving from Russia and Belarus. Officials in Latvia and its neighbour Lithuania last week said they considered ending shipments of Russian grain through their ports after Moscow stepped up the transits in response to attacks by Ukraine on its Baltic ports.
The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, said he was “horrified by reports that fully autonomous drones launched by the Russian Federation killed three Ukrainians last month”. Türk called for an urgent ban on such weapons. The New York Times has reported that a Russian drone guided entirely by an artificial intelligence system killed three civilians in Zaporizhzhia on 6 July.
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