The Fifth Administrative Court of Appeal overturned the decision of the court of first instance and found the dismissal of the head of the department of the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office, Oleksiy Kud, to be unlawful.
This is stated in the court’s ruling.
Recall, last summer investigators from the DBR and the SBU conducted searches of law enforcement officers in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions in a case about bribes for “covering” the drug business.
Searches were also carried out at Oleksiy Kud’s place. Almost immediately after the investigators’ visit, an order appeared for his dismissal “at his own request”, although it was previously asserted that marked $4,500 USD had allegedly been found on the prosecutor, for which he was dismissed.
The court found that on the day of the searches Kud notified his superiors that investigative actions were being carried out against him, after which he was pressured and demanded to immediately leave his position.
“He (Kud, – МОСТ) returned to his workplace, after which the deputy head of the regional prosecutor’s office summoned him and began to demand that he write a resignation application. In addition, the plaintiff received a call from the head of the personnel and civil service department of the regional prosecutor’s office, Kravchenko, who informed him that an official investigation had been initiated against him (Kud, – МОСТ) by order of the head of the regional prosecutor’s office, and that if the plaintiff did not write a resignation statement “at his own request”, he would still be dismissed, but based on the results of the official investigation”, – the ruling says.
The court examined messaging correspondence in which a sample resignation application was sent to Kud and clear instructions were given as to which date should be put in the document – July 28, although the conversation and events actually took place on July 31 (the day of the searches).
Witnesses also confirmed that Kud did not intend to leave his job.
Furthermore, it turned out that as of January 2026 Kud is not a suspect in this criminal case at all, and the procedure for his dismissal was carried out with gross errors – Kud’s resignation statement was not even registered in the prosecutor’s official document management system.
Therefore, the court overturned the decision of the previous instance and obliged the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office to reinstate Oleksiy Kud to the position of head of the department of procedural guidance in the conduct of pre-trial investigations by territorial police authorities and the support of public prosecution of the Department for Supervision of Compliance with the Laws by the National Police of Ukraine of the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office.
The agency must also pay him average earnings for the entire period of forced absence, namely UAH 539,864.