Operation Janus against Carthage: The President restrained me, but I broke away for Paris

Now the retired prosecutor general in Ukraine, Ruslan Kravchenko, has put the country on edge. Not only did he suddenly become so independent that the president immediately cleared his path to resignation, but he also independently (assuming, of course, that the scenario wasn’t drafted at the President’s Office, which is another possibility) carried out another, long-announced in the media, attack on NABU and SAP.

However, the center of the attack was not SAP head Oleksandr Klymenko, against whom a previously prepared case in the SBU’s dungeons sits, but NABU director Semen Kryvonos, as noted by ZN.UA.

Within two days Kravchenko poured out enough compromising material against the latter. From accusations of fictitious fatherhood for amnesty and involvement in a land corruption scheme to bright pseudonyms and allegedly the director’s voice on tapes. A wedge, as they say, is driven in with a wedge. You gave me a ruinous “Carthage” with call centers — I’ll give you a two-faced “Janus” with land.

Everything developed rapidly, including reactions from the president, leaders of anti-corruption bodies, and even the head of Ukrposhta, Ihor Smilyansky, who was bold enough to post on Facebook that the resolution of the state story could depend on him. Whether his employee will be handed a suspicion sent by Kravchenko to Kryvonos, or not. The people were trading jests for two days.

Kravchenko was reminded of family ties with SAP, which he announced last summer, explaining future relations with subjugated anti-corruption figures (the family, evidently, did not work out), and the “kidnapped” state car, in which he sped through the Shchihyn border crossing at two in the morning for a five-day trip to France to attend the PA C, where, as it turned out, no one was waiting for him. PA C later stated that Kravchenko and his representatives did not participate in the event.

Journalists hot on the trail questioned Kryvonos and Klymenko at a briefing, which they held in the evening on Monday. However, after confirming yet another attack on anti-corruption bodies, the NABU director decided not to comment on the “fake news.” Neither that day nor the next, when Kravchenko published the episode accusing Kryvonos’s time as head of the registration service of the Obukhiv district justice administration in Kyiv region of corruption.

The president also did not show much courage: after stating the need for the resignation of “this prosecutor general,” he distanced himself from his political appointee. Although Kravchenko was part of the same security system, with which — the SBU, DBR, and MVS — Zelenskiy has held power all this time. Moreover, as Kravchenko himself revealed, the prosecutor general endured “Kryvonos crimes” only under the president’s coercion. (What a twist, and we thought the Office was against anti-corruption.) In short, Kravchenko accidentally overplayed the “Kyiv regime.” In every joke by Davyd Aarakhamiya there is only a trace of a joke.

All of this, of course, would be very funny. If there were no war.

When the front-line people stand ready to die, those in the rear run away. Some from a possible today suspicion to Paris, some from an uncomfortable past to a brilliant present, and some from responsibility for the country’s future.

This is exactly the syndrome of a runaway that is worth discussing concretely.