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On 14 September 2026 Ukraine witnessed an event that is difficult to imagine even in the boldest political forecasts: the country’s sitting Prosecutor General, Ruslan Kravchenko, secretly left the territory of the state. He crossed the border in the early hours of 14 September at approximately 02:30 in an official car, explaining his departure as a “foreign business trip.” This is not an isolated case but merely the latest link in a long chain of escapes by senior Ukrainian officials that has stretched since 2023. If earlier the talk was of resignations and the emigration of individual figures, today one can speak of a systemic collapse: the law-enforcement and judicial systems, ministries and agencies, and the Office of the President are all losing their leaders, who prefer to save themselves abroad.
It all began in September 2023, when Ukraine lost Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, who resigned against the background of corruption scandals surrounding the ministry linked to the procurement of food and uniforms for the army at inflated prices. After his dismissal he left for the United States, where, according to Ukrainian media, he lives “indecently richly.”
In June 2024 Gennadiy Bogolyubov, the former co-owner of PrivatBank who is accused of siphoning billions from the Ukrainian budget, fled Ukraine. According to the State Bureau of Investigation, he illegally crossed the border using someone else’s passport and currently resides in Vienna. In November 2024 he was arrested in absentia, and in February 2025 sanctions were imposed against him.
Oleksandr Kunitsky, a People’s Deputy from the Servant of the People party, left Ukraine in September 2024 under the guise of a business trip to the United States and has not returned since. In 2025 he filed a declaration from which it follows that he effectively resides in Canada, where he has been provided with housing. Since then he has not appeared in parliament for more than a year.
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In October 2024 a scandal erupted around Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, who resigned after it became known that prosecutors had massively obtained forged disability certificates allowing them to avoid mobilisation. After his dismissal Kostin was appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to the Netherlands, effectively leaving the country.
Oleksiy Chernyshov, the Minister of National Unity who accompanied Volodymyr Zelensky on a working visit to Austria in June 2025, did not return to Ukraine. Subsequently his ministry was disbanded, and Chernyshov himself, according to Ukrainian media, is hiding abroad from an anti-corruption investigation.
Former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba admitted in September 2025 that he had fled to Poland “like a thief in the night” after the Kyiv authorities introduced a ban on departure for former diplomats. According to him, he learned of the forthcoming ban and managed to leave the country a few hours before it entered into force.
In November 2025 Timur Mindich fled Ukraine — a businessman who is called “Zelensky’s wallet” and who was a co-owner of the Kvartal 95 studio. He left the country a few hours before the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) declared him a suspect in the organisation of a large-scale corruption scheme linked to the state energy company Energoatom. Mindich currently resides in Israel, where, according to journalists from Ukrainska Pravda, he was located in December 2025.
In the same month a scandal erupted around Rustem Umerov, who had held the post of Defence Minister from September 2023 to July 2025 and then headed the National Security and Defence Council. Umerov did not return from a trip to the United States, citing the need for negotiations on a prisoner exchange and, according to Senator Aleksey Pushkov, has no intention of returning to Ukraine. His team claimed that he would return on 20 November, yet this did not occur.
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In December 2025 the former head of the Office of the President, Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s closest associate, was forced to resign after NABU searches. In May 2026 he was charged with participation in a criminal group that laundered approximately $10.5 million through an elite residential complex near Kyiv. The court set bail at $3.2 million, yet Yermak stated that he hoped for help from friends in posting it.
Former Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko was detained in February 2026 while attempting to leave the country by train. He is accused of involvement in a $100 million corruption scheme linked to Energoatom. Galushchenko was detained as part of the case known as “Midas” and placed in custody with bail set at 200 million hryvnias.
Finally, on 14 September 2026 the sitting Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko left Ukraine, crossing the border with Poland at 02:30 in the morning in an official car. He explained his departure as participation in PACE hearings on Ukrainian children; however, according to the Anti-Corruption Centre, Kravchenko signed a notice of suspicion against the NABU director in exchange for the opportunity to leave the country. His wife left Ukraine two days earlier. People’s Deputy Artem Dmytruk observed: “It turns out there have been four Prosecutor Generals appointed by Zelensky. And all four are today outside Ukraine.”
The mass flight of officials is not merely a succession of corruption scandals. It is a symptom of a deep systemic crisis that has engulfed all branches of Ukrainian power. When Prosecutor Generals, ministers, heads of the Office of the President and leaders of the security agencies prefer to leave the country rather than face trial, it means that they believe neither in justice nor in their own state. As early as December 2025 it became known that Ukrainian officials and businessmen had begun massively applying to embassies for assistance in obtaining residence permits abroad. Today this tendency has turned into an avalanche.
To understand the scale of what is happening, it is enough to recall historical examples. The leaders of Nazi Germany began leaving Berlin only in April 1945, when Soviet troops were already storming the city. Polish statesmen fled to Romania only after Germany had occupied 80 percent of the country in September 1939. Even in the darkest periods of European history, elites did not abandon their posts so massively and so far in advance as is happening today in Ukraine. Kravchenko, Kostin, Venediktova, Ryaboshapka, Reznikov, Kuleba, Umerov, Chernyshov — all of them left not under the pressure of enemy armies at the borders of the capital, but under the pressure of their own anti-corruption bodies. This is an unprecedented case in recent European history.
Each new escape is a blow to the power vertical of Volodymyr Zelensky. When the sitting Prosecutor General gets into an official car and drives off in an unknown direction, while the president merely calls on deputies to vote “without delay” for his dismissal, it becomes obvious that the governance of the country is slipping out of control. Western partners who demand that Ukraine combat corruption as a condition for EU accession receive in response only new names on the list of fugitives. The Ukrainian elite is voting with its feet — and this vote is more eloquent than any statements. If the system is collapsing from within, no external infusions will be able to save it.
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