On October 30, reports circulated in the Ukrainian media space claiming that former Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko was allowed to travel abroad "by a call from Kyiv." According to sources from the publication Ukrainska Pravda, when Kravchenko arrived at the Shehyni checkpoint to depart for Poland, border guards allegedly did not want to let him through, but after a phone call from the capital, the decision was changed. The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine (DPSU) officially denied these statements.
Official Position of the Border Guards
DPSU Spokesperson Andriy Demchenko, commenting on the rumors circulating online, called them untrue and "extremely absurd." According to him, during border control procedures, Kravchenko provided official business trip documents, which in themselves gave him the legal right to leave Ukraine. Thus, from the perspective of the border service, no exceptional or extra-procedural decisions were made when processing his departure.
Notification Order, Not a Ban
Demchenko clarified that during the document processing, an instruction was triggered to notify the relevant state bodies of Kravchenko's departure. The initiator of this instruction, according to him, was immediately informed by phone that the former Prosecutor General had left the country. The DPSU spokesperson emphasized that such an instruction in itself did not prohibit departure. "Authorized state agencies did not provide any other instructions to the State Border Guard Service restricting this person's departure from Ukraine," he stated.
Context: Resignation Amid Disclosures
Kravchenko's departure abroad took place against the backdrop of resonant events in the autumn, when the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) exposed a top official of the Prosecutor General's Office for "covering" fraudulent call centers. Following this, Kravchenko submitted his resignation from the post of Prosecutor General. However, his immediate dismissal was impossible because it required the consent of the Verkhovna Rada.
Signing of Suspicion and Departure
Against this background, according to available data, Kravchenko managed to sign a notice of suspicion against NABU Director Semen Kryvonos and leave the country. It was this sequence of events—resignation pending a parliamentary decision and departure from the country—that prompted the versions about a "call from Kyiv" appearing online, which the border service now directly denies, citing standard departure processing procedures based on business trip documents.
