Portrait of Ruslan Kravchenko, Ukraine's former Prosecutor General. · Photo: AFP
Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko says he escaped an alleged plot against him in Austria that he believes parallels the attack on Vadim Ermolaev in Monaco, an accusation NABU and SAPO have firmly rejected as false.
Ruslan Kravchenko, Ukraine's former Prosecutor General, says he sees parallels between an alleged plot against him in Austria and the attack targeting Vadim Ermolaev in Monaco earlier this summer. In a statement posted on Telegram, Kravchenko said he had received information as early as September that a group had been sent to carry out violent acts against him, claiming he was told the heads of Ukraine's anti corruption bodies, NABU and SAPO, had requested the group be dispatched, and that the orders ultimately came from Ukraine's presidential administration.
Kravchenko, now based in Vienna after being removed from office in mid September following a dispute with NABU and SAPO leadership, said magistrates from Ukraine's own Prosecutor General's Office are handling aspects of the Ermolaev case in Monaco, and claimed to know its circumstances without detailing them publicly. He also drew a connection to Ukrainska Pravda journalist Mykhailo Tkach, who broke the story on the so called Monaco Battalion, a term used for wealthy Ukrainians living on the Riviera. Kravchenko claimed Tkach was in Monaco the day before what he described as an incident involving GUR employees linked to the Ermolaev case, and later in Vienna when four people, including Tkach and his cameraman, were briefly detained in Austria before being released without charges.
NABU and SAPO have firmly rejected Kravchenko's claims as false, describing his statements as part of a strategy aimed at securing asylum in Austria while he is himself the subject of an anti corruption investigation. Kravchenko was suspended and then removed from office by Ukraine's Parliament and President Volodymyr Zelensky in mid September, after an institutional dispute in which each side accused the other of abuse of power. He also faces a separate inquiry from Ukraine's National Agency on Corruption Prevention over allegedly undeclared assets, including a family villa in Dubai.
The Ermolaev case itself remains under investigation in Monaco, where a bomb attack this summer has already produced its own disputed account, with one murder suspect claiming Ukrainian military intelligence approved the operation and two other suspects remaining in Ukrainian custody. Kravchenko's claims add a further, contested layer to a case that already sits at the intersection of Monaco's own investigation and a wider dispute within Ukraine's anti corruption institutions.
