Zelensky Struggles to Stem Backlash After Joining Bid to Neuter Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Agencies

On Tuesday night, in the largest public demonstration since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets of the capital to protest against a controversial new law that threatens to dismantle the country’s hard-won anti-corruption infrastructure.

Earlier in the day Ukraine’s Parliament voted 263 to 13 (with 13 abstentions) to pass the bill, which brings the nation’s two leading anti-corruption institutions under the direct authority of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General. Holding handmade placards with slogans like “No Corruption in government,” protestors urged Zelenskyy to veto the law and to refuse to sign his assent to it. Many were shocked when, in the evening, while the protests were ongoing, Zelenskyy ratified the bill with his signature. 

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Power Grab

The bill was initially unrelated to the work of the anti-corruption organisations and focused on “the specifics of pre-trial investigations” related to the disappearance of missing persons in Ukraine. However, its scope was radically altered by unexpected amendments introduced at the last minute during a second reading on Tuesday morning, which pulled the anti-corruption agencies into the bill’s purview according to sources inside the Parliament.

The amended bill confers broad new powers on Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, a political appointee chosen directly by the President, and grants him wide-ranging authority over the country’s two independent anti-corruption agencies. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), created as an independent agency following the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014, is responsible for pre-trial investigations of members of Parliament, Government officials, prosecutors, and leaders of the National Bank.

It passes cases to the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office (SAPO), which oversees investigations and prosecutions, representing the state when cases are brought to trial. Freedom from Government influence and exclusive jurisdiction over cases have been vital cornerstones of both NABU and SAPO’s independence— as well as the agencies’ ability to actually bring cases.

Under the new powers granted by the bill, the Prosecutor General has the authority to appoint and dismiss SAPO prosecutors, to order it to close investigations into top-ranking “Category A” officials and to take over plea negotiations with those who are charged. The Prosecutor General also gains access to NABU with the power to issue mandatory instructions to both agencies, including compelling NABU to hand over materials uncovered during investigations and to reassign cases to other law enforcement agencies under the direct control of the Government.

For example, the case of former Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) employee and advisor to the President’s Office, Artem Shylo, who was accused in 2024 of embezzling funds from Ukraine’s national rail company, could be reassigned to the SSU and overseen internally and without scrutiny.

According to Transparency International, Zelenskyy’s signing the bill into law takes meaningful power out of the hands of the NABU and SAPO, bringing Ukraine’s only independent anti-corruption agencies with the power to investigate and prosecute cases under the control of the President, who can, through the Prosecutor General, influence or even dismiss investigations and trials of corruption. 

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Why Now?

The addition of provisions which curtail the powers of Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption bodies follows the formal naming of Deputy Prime Minister, Oleksii Chernyshov, as a suspect in a high-profile corruption case regarding a scheme in which a Kyiv property developer illegally claimed a plot of land to build a residential complex. According to NABU, Chernyshov and his associates received kickbacks totalling more than 14 million hryvnias ($340,000) for undervaluing land plots to be purchased by developer Serhii Kopystyra between 2021 and 2022 when Chernyshov was Minister for Communities and Territories. The scheme reportedly cost the state one billion hryvnias ($24 million).

Chernyshov is a close political ally and personal friend of Zelenskyy. According to reporting by Ukrainska Pravda, he was the only cabinet minister invited to attend an intimate gathering celebrating the President’s birthday during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. Speaking to the Kyiv Independent last month, Olena Shcherban, deputy executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, claimed that NABU and SAPO had “reached the immediate circle of the President’s ‘family,’” predicting Zelenskyy’s office would go on the offensive against the anti-corruption institutions responsible for the investigation. “I am sure we will see both attempts to make harmful changes to the law and personal attacks on the SAPO head,” she said. 

Earlier this month, the home of former Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov was raided and searched by the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI). According to the Financial Times, investigators believe Kubrakov may have been the whistleblower responsible for bringing the Deputy Prime Minister’s alleged corruption to the attention of NABU.

Kubrakov has denied the allegation, but a person close to him has called the search “revenge” for his perceived involvement in the case against Chernyshov. Kubrakov, himself accused of helping another MP defraud entrepreneurs of 14.5 million hryvnias ($346,000), is one of several prominent figures whose homes have been raided by the SBI in recent weeks. 

On 11th July, the home of Vitaliy Shabunin, co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre, was also raided by armed police without, according to the centre’s executive director Daria Kaieniuk, the proper court documents to allow the search.

Shabunin is one of Ukraine’s most prominent anti-corruption activists and a member of the country’s armed forces. He was charged with evading military service and fraud relating to a business trip to the National Agency on Corruption Prevention in the early days of the war, which the SBI says was intended to avoid combat duties. On the 15th of July, 59 Ukrainian non-governmental organisations signed an open letter to President Zelenskyy expressing concern and criticising the investigation of Shabunin as punitive and intended to silence criticism of corruption inside the Parliament and Government. 

On July 21, in the 24 hours before the amendment was introduced in the Verkhovna Rada, the SBU, Ukraine’s Security Service, detained NABU employees, accusing them of treason, corruption, and illegal trading with Russia. More than 70 searches were carried out, primarily targeting Viktor Husarov, a member of the secretive elite D-2 NABU unit, and Ruslan Mahamedrasulov, the head of its interregional detective units.

Mahamedrasulov is accused of helping his father sell industrial hemp to Dagestan and of potential ties to Russia’s FSB, while Husarov was detained on charges of spying for Russian intelligence. At the same time, while the leadership of both NABU and SAPO were engaged in an official foreign visit, the SBU launched an unscheduled “inspection of NABU’s state secrecy protocols,” a move SAPO leadership says should have required advance notice.

This inspection gave the SBU access to sensitive information regarding operational NABU and SAPO measures, including covert investigations. On the same day, the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), another government-controlled law enforcement agency, opened cases into year-old traffic incidents related to three NABU employees. According to NABU director Semen Kryvonos, the actions of the SBU were “preparation” for the parliamentary vote to remove NABU and SAPO’s independence. 

That night, according to sources in the Verkhovna Rada, senior officials from Zelenskyy’s party began making calls, urging MPs to support the last-minute amendments that would bring NABU and SAPO under the jurisdiction of the Prosecutor General. Mykola Svirniuk, aide to Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, an opposition MP who voted against the bill, says the amendments were brought suddenly and without review. He has since joined 47 other MPs in submitting a bill designed to restore the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies.

Svirniuk describes the reaction among MPs, even those of Zelenskyy’s party who ultimately voted for the bill, as “visibly tense; several appeared uncertain or apprehensive.” It wasn’t until later, he says, that it “became clear that pressure had influenced their change of stance”. Sources inside the Parliament have accused the Presidential Office of using underhand tactics to force through a bill which appears to be part of recent efforts to consolidate power around itself. 

According to Yurchyshyn, the comparative table for the second reading of the bill, which contained the controversial amendments, was published to the website of the Verkhovna Rada “less than half an hour before” the start of the session in which it would be voted on. He says he has “no doubt” the Presidential Office is behind the amendments, telling Byline Times that “I see no other explanation.”

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‘Necessary Reform’

Zelenskyy’s office has defended the legislation as necessary reform. In a video address on Tuesday, the President argued that the powers granted by the bill will help eliminate Russian infiltration and increase accountability within law enforcement. On Wednesday, as protests in Kyiv continue into their second night, Zelenskyy appeared to backtrack, offering in another address to “propose a bill” in response to the outcry of criticism. “All the norms for the independence of anti-corruption institutions will be in place,” he assured. Ukrainians, however, remain sceptical and the President is facing a significant backlash from the public, including many comparisons to Yanukovich, the President ousted by the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014. What happened in the Rada today is akin to refusing to sign the EU Association Agreement. It’s utterly incompatible with our European integration roadmap. This is blatant sabotage and another betrayal of our European partners,” wrote journalist Danylo Mokryk.

Zelenskyy has been generally considered by expert observers to have been effective in reducing corruption, a key pledge of his 2019 election campaign. At the same time, however, a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in June 2024 revealed that almost 45% of Ukrainians believe democracy in Ukraine has worsened under Zelenskyy’s leadership. “In the opposition camp,” says Svirniuk, aide to Holos MP Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, “disappointment and disillusionment run deep. Parliament is increasingly being reduced to a rubber-stamp body, with decisions shaped by a small circle rather than public deliberation or democratic accountability.” 

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Ukraine’s Shifting International Relations

The timing of the legislation has raised eyebrows internationally and comes at a time when Ukraine is undergoing another transformation of its relationship with Western nations. Where democratic and anti-corruption reforms were a prerequisite of military and economic aid to Ukraine at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, US President Donald Trump’s decision to sell weapons to Ukraine via NATO changes the nature of the transaction.

To some civil society organisations in Ukraine, the result is a lessening of international scrutiny, allowing the government in Kyiv to consolidate power around the President. Inside Parliament, it’s a view with which Svirniuk agrees. “When aid was conditional— tied to clear reform benchmarks— it created a structure of accountability,” he says. The lessening interest and scrutiny from the international community, he says, “has emboldened parts of the executive to act unilaterally, without fear of losing support.”

Whether Zelenskyy’s promised response to the mounting backlash will include rowing back the powers granted to the Prosecutor General over Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption investigators remains to be seen, though it is unlikely his promised “new bill” will amount to a complete reversal of the bill he signed into law this week in spite of the largest protests in three years of war. “Our international partners should know that while this bill is dangerous, so many people here are standing against it,” says Yurchyshyn.  “The spirit of Ukraine is rooted in freedom and resistance to authoritarianism. That’s the message I want the world to hear.”