Prosecutor General Kostin resigned due to the mass issuance of fake disability statuses by prosecutors

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin has announced his resignation. This comes after President Volodymyr Zelensky commented on the mass disability registrations by prosecutors, indicating political accountability for the scandal.

“Today, the President of Ukraine held a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) concerning the clearly immoral situation with false disability registrations by public officials. Many shameful abuses have been uncovered, including within the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office,” Kostin wrote.

He acknowledged that he fully supports the president’s stance on the need for “personal responsibility,” including political accountability. Kostin stated that he is stepping down due to the scandal involving prosecutors in Khmelnytskyi Oblast fraudulently obtaining disability statuses. However, rumors of his dismissal had been circulating since spring.

At that time, the main reason for the potential dismissal was linked to scandals over Kostin’s frequent absences from Ukraine. Media reports revealed that Kostin spent a significant number of days abroad, particularly in the U.S., where his family lives. Sources initially suggested that Kostin’s likely successor would be Oleg Kiper, the former Kyiv prosecutor and current head of the Odesa Military Administration, who, like Kostin, is from Odesa.

It was also possible that Kostin’s first deputy, Oleksiy Khomenko, might temporarily take over the role. However, this was the situation in the spring, and it remains to be seen how the situation will unfold once the parliament approves Kostin’s resignation.

Kostin’s announcement followed Zelensky’s post summarizing the NSDC meeting, which focused on corruption within medical-social expert commissions (MSECs) and the mass disability registrations by prosecutors. During the meeting, security officials reported on investigations in this area, and the Cabinet of Ministers proposed steps to address the problem. The NSDC outlined a series of measures, which Zelensky confirmed by decree:

• Digitalization of all processes within MSECs;
• Verification of the declarations of MSEC members;
• Review and audit of unjustified disability decisions concerning public officials and the corresponding pension payments;
• Personnel changes;
• Legislative reforms to overhaul the MSEC system and the mechanism for pension payments to public officials.

This last point confirms earlier suspicions that prosecutors had been securing disability statuses even before the war to retire early with substantial pension benefits.

The head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Vasyl Malyuk, reported that the SBU had charged 64 MSEC officials with corruption this year, with nine already convicted. Over 4,000 disability statuses have been revoked, and investigations are ongoing in 2,400 cases. New corruption episodes within the MSECs have been uncovered in Kharkiv, Rivne, Mykolaiv, and Zakarpattia regions.

Earlier, the media had reported on widespread corruption schemes in MSECs, which had become an alternative corrupt system similar to military recruitment centers, offering solutions for avoiding mobilization.