Ukraine parliament to vote on law to restore powers of anti-corruption bodies

The Guardian

6 days ago

Ukraine's parliament will vote on a new law on Thursday that would restore independence to two anti-corruption bodies, backtracking on a controversial law passed last week that curtailed their powers and led to a political crisis.
Last week's legal changes prompted rare wartime street protests against the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and accusations that the presidential office was trying to protect powerful associates from anti-corruption investigations.
Thousands of people took to the streets of Kyiv and other cities, while European leaders spoke with Zelenskyy and made it clear that funding for Kyiv could be affected if he was seen to be hampering anti-corruption efforts. Surprised and alarmed by the strength of the reaction, Zelenskyy announced late last week that he had listened to the criticism and would table a new law.
'It seems they really miscalculated, they completely underestimated the strength of the reaction,' said a western diplomat based in Kyiv.
The institutions in question are the national anti-corruption bureau, known as Nabu, and the specialised anti-corruption prosecutor's office, Sapo. Both work independently of other law-enforcement bodies specifically to target high-level corruption.
Oleksandr Klymenko, the head of Sapo, told a small group of journalists in a briefing at his office in Kyiv on Wednesday that his office received a tipoff that measures were being prepared against them two weeks ago, but had not expected the 'blitzkrieg' assault that followed, with the law being rushed through parliament with little discussion. He said he hoped the parliament would now pass the new law, and that it would be ratified and enacted 'immediately'.
Explaining the hastily passed law last week, Zelenskyy said he feared Nabu and Sapo had been infiltrated by Russian agents, and also said he wanted to ensure closer cooperation between different law enforcement bodies, but this has been brushed off by many Ukrainians as excuses.
Klymenko declined to blame Zelenskyy personally for the move against the two institutions but suggested it was 'revenge' for taking on certain sensitive cases and defended the track record of the two bodies.
'To say in 2025 that these bodies are ineffective is just absurd. It's a narrative that is being spread to discredit us, we have information that they are looking for information to dump it in the media and just such a narrative that is now being spread in the media in order to somehow discredit us,' he said.
Klymenko said Nabu and Sapo currently had open investigations into 31 sitting MPs, and that the prospect of being caught meant fewer top officials risked engaging in corrupt activities. 'The main thing about our work is the enormous preventive effect it has,' he said.
He said last week's law, as well as the arrest of two Nabu detectives, had left the agencies 'confused and frightened', and might cause 'lasting damage' even if the bill was reversed. Already, he said, government whistleblowers who were in communication with the agencies had gone dark, fearing their identities could be compromised.
Several European leaders spoke last week with Zelenskyy about the law, urging him to find a way out of the crisis. 'It was important for him to hear it from his peers,' said the diplomat. European officials have also cautiously criticised the bill in public.
'The dismantling of key safeguards protecting [anti-corruption bureau] Nabu's independence is a serious step back,' the European commissioner for enlargement, Marta Kos, wrote on social media. She added that the two bodies were 'essential' to keep Ukraine on the path to EU accession.
A new protest is planned for Kyiv on Wednesday evening, with the goal of 'reminding MPs to do the right thing', said Dmytro Koziatynskyi, a former combat medic who was the first to call people to protest last week.
'This is not something I went to war for … and others on the frontline are not there so the government can do crazy stuff like this,' he said, explaining the source of the frustration that led him to demand protests.
He added, however, that there was no chance of the protest turning revolutionary, with everyone in attendance acutely aware of the dangers of political destabilisation in wartime. He praised the government for being 'ready for dialogue' and backtracking on the moves, and said the protests showed that Ukrainian democracy was still strong even though the war makes elections impossible.