UP: Odesa businessman helped ex-Prosecutor General Kravchenko hide in Austria and organize the detention of journalists in Vienna

A businessman from Odesa, who is being investigated by NABU and SAPO in Ukraine, helped former Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko hide in Austria. Kravchenko himself was able to obtain protection from Austrian special services and organize the detention in Vienna of UP journalists who went there to look for him.

This is stated in the investigation of Ukrainska Pravda (UP).

Journalists were able to access the official case files, namely reports from the Austrian State Protection and Intelligence Directorate. One of them stated that between September 14 and 18, the Austrian State Protection and Counter-Extremism Directorate (LSE) took care of “a Ukrainian who was in danger”.

This person reported seeing the head of the “Artan” group, a military special forces unit subordinate to Ukrainian military intelligence, at the “Park Hyatt” hotel in Vienna.

Viennese special services stopped this person and confirmed that he was indeed the head of “Artan” Viktor Torkotyuk. He explained that he was in Vienna with bodyguards for tourist purposes.

Already on October 6, Torkotyuk appealed to the LSE because law enforcement officers had detained two of his people. Moreover, the report, along with the names of the detained GUR members, mentions Yaroslav Bondarenko, an operator of Ukrainska Pravda.

"He [Torkotyuk] had a photo of a Polish car that two GUR officers and Bondarenko used during the surveillance. Moreover, the photo was taken in Vienna," the report says.

Another report stated that the Austrian special services, based on video from surveillance cameras and a copy of the passport from the car rental company, established that one of the two detained GUR fighters and Bondarenko allegedly left the parking lot together.

In addition, Bondarenko and the GUR members were allegedly seen in different combinations during surveillance — a photo from unnamed victims was cited as confirmation of this. The materials also include photos from surveillance cameras — however, in the car with Bondarenko, it is not a GUR member, but a UP journalist Mykhailo Tkach.

Journalists are convinced that the so-called victims who gave evidence are the staff of Odesa businessman Volodymyr Halanternyk. The UP sources call him a close person of Ruslan Kravchenko and claim that it is he who is hiding the ex-prosecutor general.

Halanternyk is a defendant in two NABU and SAPO cases, who has been hiding abroad for many years. The investigation suspects that he was a member of a criminal group that robbed the Odesa community.

In particular, the case materials contain the driverʼs testimony that he was being followed by unknown individuals. Journalists from the Ukrainska Pravda did indeed follow him and filmed that this driver was driving a person who looked like Volodymyr Halanternyk.

When the UP journalists were detained, they told law enforcement officers during interrogation that they were working near the building where Kravchenko may have lived. Immediately during the interrogation, the Viennese law enforcement officers made a request to the Central Register of Residences and confirmed that Kravchenko was indeed registered there.

The UP sources also say that when Kravchenko tried to leave Ukraine, his passport was taken away from him at the “Shehyni” checkpoint and was not released for a long time.

"Later, as the same interlocutors assure, the border guards received a call from Kyiv and released Kravchenko to Vienna, where the security of the Viennese special service could already be waiting for him and, accordingly, the head of the ʼArtanʼ special unit could also be waiting. And when we find Kravchenko, it turns out that servicemen of the GUR of the Ministry of Defense appear at the same address, who at the time of the detention have military ID cards, some hidden cameras, trackers and immediately admit that they are GUR members. Their immediate superior Viktor Torkotyuk immediately contacts the Austrian special service, confirming that they are his subordinates," the UP material says.

The journalists are convinced that if it had not been for the appearance of GUR servicemen at the address where their film crew was working, law enforcement officers could have simply checked their documents and they would have continued their work.

Moreover, another report by Austrian law enforcement officers stated that they had received an order to monitor the journalists the day before their detention.

Dismissal of Ruslan Kravchenko

Ruslan Kravchenko has been Prosecutor General since June 2025. On September 15 of this year, Zelensky dismissed him after the then Prosecutor General signed a complaint against the head of NABU Serhiy Kryvonos and a person close to the head of SAPO Oleksandr Klymenko. At the same time, the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office officially stated that the information about the suspicion of Kryvonos is not true.

Kravchenko signed these suspicions after NABU and SAPO published an investigation on September 4 into the "covering up" of fraudulent call centers, which, according to the investigation, was headed by an official of the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office.

The records in this case include "The Boss" — the former head of the State Tax Service. From December 2024 to June 2025, Ruslan Kravchenko was the head of the State Tax Service.

On the day Kravchenko reported the suspicion of Kryvonos and a close person Klymenko, the media wrote that the then Prosecutor General had fled abroad. He himself said that he had gone on a business trip.

This business trip ended on September 18, but he never returned to work, although despite his dismissal from office he continued to be in the status of an ordinary prosecutor. This provided a legal basis for his final dismissal from the prosecutorʼs office.

On September 17, Anton Kovalsky, who was previously the head of the Khmelnytskyi Regional Prosecutorʼs Office, became the acting prosecutor general.

Detention of UP journalists in Vienna

On October 8, the editorial office of the Ukrainska Pravda reported that Mykhailo Tkach and cameraman Yaroslav Bondarenko were illegally detained in Vienna, where they were preparing a story about former Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko.

Tkach was released on October 9, and Bondarenko was released a little later. Tkach said that they were detained "like terrorists: without explanation, they broke the windows in the car, pointed weapons at them, and forced them to lie face down on the road."

Bondarenko was injured during the arrest: shards of glass cut his hand and got stuck under his eye. He was taken to the hospital after being taken to the pre-trial detention center, and during the operation, they refused to remove the handcuffs.

The Vienna prosecutorʼs office later said that Tkach and Bondarenko were detained based on eyewitness accounts that three people were watching the same place at the same time. Two of them had been detained earlier (Austrian media reported that they were Ukrainian intelligence officers), and when the third was detained, there was another person in the car with him. The Austrians insist that at the time of the detention they did not know that they were a journalist and a cameraman for the Ukrainian Broadcasting Corporation.

Only later did they admit that the journalists had no connection to the previously detained Ukrainians.

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