Anton Kovalsky becomes acting prosecutor general of Ukraine — compromising material already published about him

Vladimir Zelensky has appointed Anton Kovalsky, head of the Khmelnytskyi regional prosecutor’s office, as acting prosecutor general of Ukraine.

This came after the dismissal of Ruslan Kravchenko amid the scandal surrounding the “Carthage” case involving corruption in the Office of the Prosecutor General.

Kovalsky has worked in the prosecutor’s office since 2011. Over that time he rose from senior investigator to deputy prosecutor of Vinnytsia region. In 2020 he became deputy head of the Vinnytsia regional prosecutor’s office, in 2021 he headed the Chernivtsi office, and from July 2025 he led the Khmelnytskyi regional prosecutor’s office. He was appointed to that last post by Kravchenko himself.

Kovalsky was sent to Khmelnytskyi region following a scandal involving dozens of local prosecutors who had obtained disability status, which led to the removal of his predecessor Oleksiy Oliynyk. According to the outlet Strana, the issue of the Khmelnytskyi “disabled” prosecutors has since gone quiet. In political circles, Kovalsky is considered loyal both to Bankova and to the leader of the Servant of the People parliamentary faction, David Arakhamia.

The key political question surrounding the new appointment is whether Kovalsky is prepared to serve suspicion notices on pro-presidential members of parliament if such notices are prepared by NABU and the SAP. Under the law, only the prosecutor general has the right to serve suspicion notices on Rada deputies. As Strana writes, the main objective of the anti-corruption bodies and their support group is to use criminal cases to gain control over a majority of deputies so that they vote for the laws in the Kachka-Kos package, which would expand the powers of NABU and the SAP and strip the president of authority over the security vertical and the judicial system. Neither Zelensky nor the majority of deputies want to vote for these laws. According to the outlet, NABU and the SAP had hoped to push the president into appointing SAP head Oleksandr Klymenko as acting prosecutor general, but that plan did not come to fruition.

The Center for Countering Corruption (CCC) of Vitaliy Shabunin, which is close to NABU, has already published compromising material on the new acting prosecutor general. According to CCC materials, since 2018 Kovalsky and his family have been using a 79-square-meter apartment in Vinnytsia registered in his mother’s name. The family moved into the apartment immediately after it was purchased. His mother worked at a neuropsychiatric hospital, and her annual income between 2019 and 2021 ranged from 51,000 to 122,500 hryvnias.

In addition, from 2011 to 2022 Kovalsky listed in his declarations a Volkswagen Polo registered in his brother’s name. A Nissan Qashqai registered in his wife’s name has appeared since 2019. Kovalsky’s wife Oksana registered as a sole trader in March 2023 and went into the business of selling sports nutrition: in her first incomplete year, her declared income amounted to 5.2 million hryvnias — more than 500,000 hryvnias per month.

The CCC also reported that between 2022 and 2024 Kovalsky’s wife held a Canadian work permit, and their children had the right to study there. His wife’s Canadian bank account appeared in the declarations, with a balance of 6,000 Canadian dollars in 2022. The family’s foreign real estate, however, was not listed in the declarations. In Strana’s assessment, such publications can be seen as a hint at the problems that could arise for Kovalsky if he were to defy the anti-corruption bodies.