Ukrainian lawmakers forced through a controversial law that gives unlimited power to the General Prosecutor that civil rights groups say will gut Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms on July 22. The passage of the law sparked the first anti-government demonstrations since the war with Russia began over three years ago.

A post calling on people to meet outside the President’s offices on Bankova street in the heart of Kyiv went viral and more than 2,000 people turned up. Protestors chanted “veto the bill!” and carried placards saying “corruption = death”. Smaller rallies also took place in Dnipro, Lviv, Odesa and Sumy, the Financial Times reports.

“There haven’t been any anti-Zelenskiy protests since the Russian full-scale invasion of 2022, as the Ukrainian society realised that to survive it must stay united. Today’s move, unless reversed, is likely to change that. Soldiers on the front are particularly infuriated,” Yaroslav Trofimov, the Wall Street Journal correspondent to Ukraine said in a post on social media, describing the public reaction to the law as a “firestorm.”

The law eliminates the independence of Ukraine’s corruption investigative body, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the prosecutor’s arm, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). The two organs are part of the triumvirate that also includes the Anti-Corruption Court (ACC) to try those caught stealing. All three were set up starting in 2016 at the EU and IMF’s insistence. They are supposed to be completely independent from the government and the executive, which is not supposed to have any power of appointment other than to approve the chief selected by an independent body of experts.

The bill hands all control of all corruption investigations to the General Prosecutor, who is a presidential appointee and directly under his control. Likewise, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), Ukraine’s equivalent of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), is also directly under the president’s control. The bill passed with 263 votes, with a second vote approved by 246 MPs to send the legislation to the president’s desk immediately.

According to the new law, NABU and SAPO will now be placed under the wartime authority of the prosecutor-general, who is appointed by the president.

The EU made a muted protest at the passage of the law and says it is now in conversation with the president’s office. In a veiled threat a spokesperson for the EU pointed out that Brussels’ funding to Kyiv was “conditional on progress on transparency, judicial reform and democratic government,” the FT reports. A joint statement from G7 ambassadors in Kyiv said they were “closely following” the situation and had raised concerns with Ukrainian government officials.

Analysts say if Zelenskiy does not veto the law, Ukraine’s EU accession bid may now be in danger and Kyiv could even face sanctions over the issue.

It will also complicate the position of new Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko, who was talking to international donors on July 22, trying to raise more money. Ukraine needs between $10bn and $15bn to plug a hole in this year’s budget and proposed to negotiate a new deal with the IMF to fund Ukraine’s government for the next few years.

The bill was forced through by Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party that has a majority in the Rada. MPs who were against the changes shouted ‘‘shame!’’ during the vote, the FT reports.

Zelenskiy may have bitten off more than he can chew. Corruption remains largely concentrated in the government, with more 70% of Ukrainians believing that their leaders are on the take, according to a recent poll. Yet after elections were suspended following the imposition of martial law in 2022 there is little the population can do to hold their leaders to account.

Nevertheless, after two revolutions Ukraine today boasts one of the strongest civil societies in the world and the people are not afraid of standing up to the authorities and even laying down their lives if the clashes become violent in defence of the rights they believe should be theirs.

Raids

On July 22, security officers raided NABU’s offices detaining at least 15 of its investigators. Two were held on suspicion of working with Russia, but most were accused of minor offenses like traffic accidents, unrelated to their work. Separately, security services also inspected SAPO offices. The SBU dismissed allegations that it may disclose sensitive information about covert operations carried out by NABU and SAPO as "unfounded and manipulative."

NABU said in a statement the searches were carried out without court warrants.

“In most cases, the grounds cited for these actions are the alleged involvement of certain individuals in traffic accidents. However, some employees are being accused of possible connections with the aggressor state. These are unrelated matters," NABU said.

These raids have come in a bunch just as the new law stripping the anti-corruption bodies of their powers was presented in the Rada and are widely seen as a politically motivated smear campaign.

And the raids have not been limited to NABU officers. Leading anti-corruption activists have also got caught up in the dragnet. On July 11, armed SBU officers, which act under the direct control of the president, also raided the Kyiv home of prominent activist Vitaliy Shabunin seizing phones and tablets from him and his family in a move he claims is politically motivated. Shabunin’s Anti-Corruption Action Centre, the non-profit that he heads, has launched multiple investigations into the Zelenskiy administration and exposed multiple cases of high-level corruption.

Shabunin said on Telegram that Zelenskiy was “taking the first but confident steps towards corrupt authoritarianism,” as accusations of Zelenskiy’s growing authoritarian traits swell in recent weeks.

Ironically the new Law on the General Prosecutor’s powers represent a reversal of Zelenskiy’s anti-corruption credentials as before the war he launched a successful campaign to curb the power of the influential businessmen following his oligarch speech in March 2021 and then his oligarch law in September the same year. He even had uber-oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky arrested in September 2023, Zelenskiy’s former mentor and business partner, who now faces life in jail for corruption.

In the latest scandal, it was revealed that Zelenskiy and his right-hand man head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, have awarded billions of hryvnias of classified drone procurement contracts to companies run by their associates, according to a recent report by investigative journalist Yurii Nikolov.

The US has long worried about the opaque nature of Bankova’s spending of US and European aid money sent to Ukraine. Last month a team of US accountants arrived in Kyiv to audit the government’s books.

The raids and the new law appear to have been fuelled by NABU accusation that Oleksiy Chernyshov, a deputy prime minister with close ties to Zelenskiy and his family, took a $345,000 bribe on a property deal, an allegation he denies – a case very similar to NABU’s 2017 accusation of corruption against Roman Nasirov, former President Petro Poroshenko’s close associate who was also accused of stealing tens of millions of dollars. Chernyshov has not been arrested but was dismissed in last week’s reshuffle that was widely seen in Kyiv as a further consolidation of power within Zelenskiy’s inner circle. Chernyshov told The Kyiv Independent that he won’t relinquish his post as Deputy Prime Minister.

It’s hard to know whether to see this as proof that NABU is ready to tackle wrongdoing at the highest levels, or as evidence of rot at the heart of the system.

NABU a muted force for change

The bill was framed as a wartime measure to regulate investigations into missing people but contains provisions that would place NABU and SAPO under tighter executive control, effectively ending their role of holding the executive to account.

“Corruption is not a problem of the system. It is the system,” a Ukrainian minister told bne IntelliNews in a private conversation several years ago. There has been some progress since then, but little has really changed. Ukraine’s elite have always opposed the Western-back anti-corruption measures.

Even the government of former pro-Western President Petro Poroshenko resisted the working of this system and he managed to block the creation of the AAC for several years. Although the need for a dedicated court was recognised early, Poroshenko’s government stalled until it eventually caved into significant pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and EU that threatened to cut off Ukraine's money in 2017.

During the Rada vote on July 22, several opposition party deputies voted for the law, including the former Orange Revolution Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who accused Ukraine’s Western partners of “trying to control Kyiv through NABU and SAPO.”

After it was established in April 2015, NABU made its first attempt to hook its first big fish, when it arrested Nasirov, the government’s financial controller and former President Petro Poroshenko's right-hand man, and charged him with embezzling millions of dollars in March 2017.

Nasirov spent an uncomfortable weekend in jail until his wife showed up and paid a million dollars in bail, in cash. He was released before the court could assemble on Monday to arraign him. He kept his job and NABU’s case against him was eventually dropped. Not only did Nasirov escape punishment, he even ran against Zelenskiy in the 2019 elections.

“Corruption-related cases that involve senior officials of the Prosecutor General’s Office are in our investigative jurisdiction, and we will keep investigating these cases. Whatever incidents may arise, they can’t affect our position,” Artem Sytnyk, head of NABU, told bne IntelliNews in an exclusive interview in his Kyiv office just after the body was established in 2016.

EU bid in danger

As bne IntelliNews reported, Ukraine’s EU accession bid stalled last week on July 18 when Bankova was hoping formal negotiations on the first cluster would be opened. Ukraine’s EU ambassador Olha Stefanishyna explained in a long interview that Bankova has given up temporarily as “multiple” EU members were unhappy with Ukraine’s progress towards membership.

Zelenskiy’s new law now not only puts Ukraine’s bid to join the EU in danger of being cancelled, the EU could respond by imposing sanctions on Ukraine for passing laws that are deemed to work against the anti-corruption efforts and undermine democracy, similar to the sanctions recently imposed on Georgia, another EU candidate that has introduced a similar Kremlin-style “foreign agent” law. At the very least Ukraine could lose its much-vaunted visa-free travel status in the EU.

Zelenskiy responds

As public anger spilled out onto the streets on the evening of July 22, Zelenskiy was backtracking rapidly and tried to refocus the debate on the need to protect Ukraine from Russian spies.

In his nightly video post released at 1am in the morning, the visibly haggard Zelenskiy said: “I spoke with the head of NABU Semen Kryvonos, SAP prosecutor Oleksandr Klymenko, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, and head of the Security Service of Ukraine Vasyl Malyuk – there are various challenges. We discussed all of this.”

“The anti-corruption infrastructure will operate. But only without Russian influences – everything must be cleansed of that. And there must be more justice,” the president said. “Of course, NABU and SAP will continue to work. And it is important that the Prosecutor General is committed to ensuring real inevitability of punishment in Ukraine for those who break the law. And that is what Ukraine truly needs. Cases that have been stagnant must be investigated.”

The public are unlikely to buy the “enemy at the gates” line as they are already well aware of the rampant corruption in the top tiers of government. Zelenskiy was forced to sack his Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov in October 2023 after a string of major military procurement corruption scandals broke earlier that year involving overpriced eggs and winter jackets. Despite the support the public has shown Zelenskiy as a heroic wartime leader, the public remains well aware that the elite have been filling their own pockets with international gold throughout the war.