The State Border Service of Ukraine (SBSU) called the information that then-Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko was released from Ukraine in September allegedly after a call from Kyiv false.
This was stated by the spokesman for the State Border Service of Ukraine Andriy Demchenko, in a comment to Interfax-Ukraine.
"The information about Kravchenkoʼs departure, supposedly ʼat the call from Kyivʼ, which is currently circulating in the information space, is false and extremely absurd," Demchenko said.
According to him, Kravchenko crossed the border on the night of September 14, 2026 through the Shehyni checkpoint in the Lviv region. He provided documents about a business trip, which gave him the right to leave Ukraine.
During the check, an order from one of the authorized state bodies with the index "I" was triggered in the border guard database (i.e., informing). According to Demchenko, it stipulates that border guards must notify the relevant body about a person crossing the border, but does not prohibit them from leaving.
A spokesman for the State Border Service of Ukraine noted that the initiator of the order was immediately notified by phone about Kravchenkoʼs departure. No instructions were received not to let him cross the border or other restrictions.
Today, Ukrainska Pravda reported in its investigation that during Kravchenkoʼs departure through Shehyni, his passport was allegedly taken away and was not returned for a long time.
According to the publicationʼs interlocutors, the reason could have been a note from NABU and SAPO in the border guard database. But later, according to UP sources, the border guards received a "call from Kyiv", after which Kravchenko was allowed to leave for Vienna.
The same investigation by the Ukrainian Police Department states that Kravchenko could have been in Austria with the support of Odesa businessman Volodymyr Halanternyk, who is a defendant in NABU and SAPO cases and has been abroad for many years.
The journalists received materials from Austrian law enforcement officers, which, according to them, show that Kravchenko was registered at the address near which the UP film crew worked, and the Austrian special services were taking care of a "Ukrainian who is in danger".
Release 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 declared the suspicion to Kryvonos and Klymenkoʼs close person, the media wrote that the then Prosecutor General had fled abroad. He 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 the 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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