UKRAINE’S WAR effort depends not only on courage and weapons, but on trust: the trust of its own citizens, and that of its Western backers. That compact is now at risk. On July 22nd the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, passed a bill that would place the country’s two main anti-corruption bodies—NABU, which investigates wrongdoing, and SAPO, which prosecutes it—under the control of the presidency. This was not the work of rogue MPs. It was orchestrated from the top by President Volodymyr Zelensky and his all-powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. It passed with large numbers of votes from the president’s own Servant of the People party. The law is a direct threat to the international support that has sustained Ukraine through the war. At home, it has drawn the first anti-Zelensky protests since the invasion.
