New Acting Prosecutor General – Anton Kovalsky. Dossier, Ties, and the Mystery of the Appointment

President Volodymyr Zelensky spent several days searching for a temporary replacement for Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, who left his responsible post ignominiously. Finally, on 17 September the head of state issued a decree placing Anton Kovalsky, the prosecutor of Khmelnytskyi region, in charge of performing the duties of Prosecutor General.

There is not yet an explanation for why the president’s choice fell on the 42-year-old Kovalsky. Alongside the Khmelnytskyi prosecutor, several other regional prosecutors were in the provisional short list of candidates.

Sources interviewed by Glavkom within law enforcement believe the head of state decided to distance himself as much as possible from Operation “Carthage” and not to appoint any of the acting deputies of the former Prosecutor General Kravchenko, who could theoretically surface on NABU and SAP tapes. That is why the casting took place among regional prosecutors.

On the other hand, betting on personnel from outside the Prosecutor General’s Office means the vertical built by Kravchenko is not meant to be preserved. The new person must build their own team.

Glavkom explains who Anton Kovalsky is and what connections he has in high-level Kyiv offices.

What is Kovalsky remembered for in Khmelnychchyna?

Public records show: Anton Kovalsky is originally from Vinnytsia. From the age of 27 (in 2011) he began working in Vinnytsia’s prosecutor’s offices. Over ten years he rose from senior investigator to deputy head of the Vinnytsia regional prosecutor’s office. Since November 2021 he headed the Chernivtsi regional prosecutor’s office.

At the beginning of July 2025 Kovalsky was transferred to the Khmelnytskyi regional prosecutor’s office. He arrived amid a disgraceful scandal involving disabled prosecutors that erupted after the State Bureau of Investigations exposed the former head of the Medical-Social Expert Commission of Khmelnychchyna, Tetyana Krupa. Incidentally, Khmelnychchyna then led in the number of prosecutors who had disability groups and were receiving substantial pension payments.

One Khmelnytskyi councilwoman recalled to Glavkom the new regional prosecutor’s first public appearance in the regional council. It was at the session on 17 September 2025. Kovalsky, who at that time had led Khmelnytskyi’s prosecutor’s office for two months, reported to deputies on the results of the prosecutor’s office’s work in the first half of 2025.

“When someone gives a report at a regional council session, deputies usually dig through their phones or tend to their own business. It’s not interesting to them. When Kovalsky spoke, I put everything aside and listened. He spoke without notes, expressively and professionally,” the councilwoman recalled.

Prosecutor Anton Kovalsky reports to deputies of the Khmelnytskyi Regional Council on 9 September 2026

photo from the regional council website

The councilwoman also recalled that Kovalsky was angered by the state of the fight against crime he inherited (in the six months of 2025 the crime rate in the region per 10 thousand population was 48,8 criminal offenses. Although, this is almost half the national figure of 79,6. For comparison: in the first half of 2026 the regional crime rate per 10 thousand population was 36,9 criminal offenses).

“I am a principled prosecutor; I don’t understand at all how they worked here. So many cases related to corruption and economic crime just lay there. And no one did anything with them. Within three months in my new post I raised all the cases and Khmelnychchyna entered the top three regions in the fight against corruption,” the interlocutor recounted Kovalsky’s words to the publication.

Kovalsky’s zeal, which Khmelnytskyi regional council deputies saw a year ago, indeed found reflection in the work of the regional prosecutor’s office. According to Glavkom’s sources in law enforcement, criminal cases that had not been investigated for ten or more years were revived. Some of them, at the initiative of the prosecutor’s office, were closed by courts due to statute of limitations.

Regarding new proceedings, Prosecutor Kovalsky and his team focused on bringing to justice heads of communities, managers of communal enterprises, and even educators. Informed interlocutors say most cases were opened under Article 191 of the Criminal Code, “Embezzlement, misappropriation of property.” However, lawyers have questions about proving intent by the accused officials in court.

“At the end of last year in Kamianets-Podilskyi a university rector purchased generators. As the fiscal year was ending, after communicating with the education department she quickly formalized the paperwork. And already on 5 January law enforcement came to the rector with suspicion that she had signed a storage agreement for the generators for five days. In short, any flaw in document flow becomes grounds for alleging a supposedly corrupt scheme,” a well-known Khmelnytskyi lawyer told Glavkom.

By the way, last year Glavkom described a case that Kovalsky’s prosecutors portrayed as a conspiracy to seize budget funds when installing a public restroom in Khmelnytskyi’s central park. It concerns an overpayment of 157 thousand UAH on a toilet costing 550 thousand UAH, which municipal workers installed in the midst of the large war, in the summer of 2022. Of the high-profile names mentioned in rulings during the pretrial investigation of that case, an ordinary lawyer of the municipal enterprise “Parks and Squares of the city of Khmelnytskyi” reached the verdict— a suspended sentence under a plea agreement.

Separately, Glavkom noted that Prosecutor Anton Kovalsky participated in trials that considered cases where the victims were minors.

In court Prosecutor Anton Kovalsky personally supported the prosecution in the case of the death of a 17-year-old youth in a traffic accident

photo: Khmelnytskyi Regional Prosecutor’s Office/Facebook

Among the latest high-profile proceedings is the arrest of the director of a language school from Khmelnytskyi, suspected of abusing a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old pupil. In particular, Kovalsky asked the court to remand the alleged offender in custody without setting bail.

“I can note an appropriate level of organization of the regional prosecutor’s office’s work and the activity of regional prosecutor Anton Kovalsky. His work shows a systematic and responsible approach to exercising the powers granted by law, attention to ensuring legality, the reasonableness of procedural decisions, and respect for the rights of participants in criminal proceedings. I positively assess his principled approach, balance, responsibility, ability to make difficult decisions, and to constructively interact with investigating authorities and the court,” one of the judges of the Khmelnytskyi City District Court, who spoke with Glavkom, praised.

Roads lead to Chernivtsi and Vinnytsia

A few words about the connections and names of possible patrons who may stand behind acting Prosecutor General Anton Kovalsky. Glavkom’s sources in the prosecutor’s office explain that influential businessman from Chernivtsi Ilya Pavliuk may be involved in such a personnel decision. Earlier media named him one of the heads of Volodymyr Zelensky’s central campaign headquarters during the elections of 2019. Pavliuk is also credited with controlling a small group of Members of Parliament from the Servant of the People party.

Moreover, in a conversation with Glavkom a former Prosecutor General noted: Ilya Pavliuk is a friend of Deputy Prosecutor General in 2020–2025 years Ihor Mustets. Mustets is also originally from Chernivtsi. It was with his arrival at the Prosecutor General’s Office that prosecutor Kovalsky’s career sharply advanced – in September 2020 he took the post of deputy head of the Vinnytsia regional prosecutor’s office. Then came the move to Chernivtsi as regional prosecutor.

It’s worth adding: until 2020 Kovalsky’s career peak was the department overseeing compliance with laws by fiscal service bodies, and then a directorate in the Vinnytsia regional prosecutor’s office.

Now a couple of facts about the new head of the Prosecutor General’s Office’s Vinnytsia background. Until 2022 prosecutor Anton Kovalsky listed his mother, Mariia Kovalska, in his declaration. At that time she worked as a dietitian physician at the Vinnytsia Regional Clinical Psychoneurological Hospital named after Academician Yushchenko.

The acting Prosecutor General’s wife, Oksana Kovalska, is a successful entrepreneur. In March 2023 she registered a private entrepreneur business registered in Vinnytsia (retail trade in non-specialized stores), which in its first year brought her 5,23 million UAH in income from entrepreneurial activity. Over 2024–2025 years her earnings totaled 7,59 million UAH.

Will Bankova allow a competition for Prosecutor General?

The appearance of a Prosecutor General with the prefix “acting” indicates that the president is not yet ready to propose a candidate for the key position in the law enforcement system to Parliament. The crisis of trust in the prosecutor’s office is too deep at the moment. A recent sociological study conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation together with the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology shows: 70% of respondents mostly or completely do not trust the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, while 26% trust it.

Also 51% of respondents said the Prosecutor General is a dependent figure. At the same time 16% consider him independent.

In such circumstances the country’s leadership faces a choice: keep everything as is with the temporary head of the Prosecutor General’s Office to let him prove himself, and, waiting for a suitable moment, propose to the Rada either him or another electable candidate.

Or the head of state will have to revise the approach and give the right to select a new Prosecutor General to a competition commission that would provide recommendations to the president on potential candidates for the post. This provision is written into the draft Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2026–2030, which in July was approved by the Rada’s Committee on Anti-Corruption Policy and recommended to deputies to adopt in the first reading. Incidentally, adopting the Strategy is one of the points for fulfilling Ukraine’s international obligations, including under the Ukraine Facility and the implementation of the Roadmap on Rule of Law issues.

Vitalii Taranenko, Glavkom