Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, has accepted responsibility for a scandal involving dozens of officials alleged to have abused their positions to receive disability status and avoid military service, and has therefore announced his resignation from the position.
This resignation followed a meeting of the national security and defense council, where officials discussed measures to combat corruption and address loopholes exploited to gain draft deferrals.
It remains unclear whether Kostin’s resignation will impact Ukraine’s efforts to hold Russia accountable for its invasion and the war crimes alleged by Kyiv, its allies, and the International Criminal Court, Reuters reports.
Kostin’s office has been engulfed by allegations that numerous local officials, including prosecutors, misused their positions to obtain disability status.
“The Prosecutor General must take political responsibility for the situation in the prosecution bodies of Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated in a strongly worded message on social media after the council meeting.
Kostin’s resignation statement followed shortly after, where he described the situation surrounding false disability diagnoses as “clearly amoral” and concurred with Zelenskiy regarding the necessity for personal accountability.
“In this situation, I believe it is right to announce my resignation from the position of Prosecutor General,” he said.
The prosecutor’s office faced significant public backlash following a report by a Ukrainian journalist revealing that 50 prosecutors in Khmelnytskyi had been registered as disabled.
Following this, Kostin ordered an investigation, revealing that 61 prosecutors in the region had disabilities, with 50 registered before the war.
“It is very important to establish why they were granted disability status, because the share of such employees in Khmelnytskyi region is very high,” he noted.
Kostin’s resignation still requires approval from parliament, where Zelenskiy’s party holds a majority, and after the president’s public call for accountability, it seems likely that parliament will approve it.
Zelenskiy added, “It is not only prosecutors, by the way. There are hundreds of cases of obviously unjustified disability (statuses) among customs and tax officials, in the Pension Fund system, and in local administrations.”
“All this must be dealt with carefully and promptly,” he stressed.
Zelenskiy has instructed his cabinet to urgently draft a law reforming the disability assessment system, aiming for the dissolution of existing medical commissions by the end of 2024.
An executive order released on Zelenskiy’s website after Tuesday’s meeting mandated that the decisions of these commissions must be reviewed within three months by a newly established working group.
Additionally, Ukraine’s domestic security service (SBU) reported that 64 members of medical commissions have been named as suspects in criminal investigations in 2024, with nine already tried and convicted.
On Tuesday, Zelenskiy said Ukraine was interested in ending the war, accusing Russia and its allies of prolonging it.
In a post on his X account, he said, “But we all are interested in ending this war, not prolonging it. That’s why we must stop Russia and its allies together. If North Korea can intervene in a war in Europe, it’s obvious that there hasn’t been enough pressure on this regime.”
