According to Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and host of the “War Room” podcast, Zelenskyy’s decision to target the anti-graft agencies may have been a smart one. “He knows MAGA is trying to nail him on stealing billions. Better to have Marjorie Taylor Greene and the War Room whine about corruption than actually have an office and folks there [that] he does not control doing something about it,” he told POLITICO.
With public and EU pressure mounting on Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian leader appeared to offer a concession Wednesday night, saying in his regular evening address that he will advance new legislation responding to protest demands that will ensure “all the norms for the independence of anti-corruption institutions will be in place.”
What he meant remains unclear and hasn’t quelled public anger over a law he signed in such haste.
The two agencies in question came into being in 2015 at the insistence of the EU and other international partners, including the administration of then-U.S. President Barack Obama. Washington and Brussels wanted to see Ukraine genuinely combat its deep-rooted and endemic corruption problem, and pressed for the establishment of anti-graft bodies independent of the government, ones that would be powerful enough to probe wrongdoing by top officials and those with political connections.
But Law No. 12414, which Zelenskyy quickly signed after it was rushed through the Verkhovna Rada with almost unprecedented haste, now strips both NABU and SAP of that independence. Instead, it grants the prosecutor general’s office the power to issue orders to these agencies and reassign cases to their own prosecutor, in effect dismantling the safeguards that protect those bodies from undue political meddling.
In Kyiv, hundreds of protesters assembled near the presidential complex, while crowds of veterans, active-duty soldiers and civilians gathered in dozens of other towns, including Lviv and the frontline cities of Odesa and Dnipro. | Danylo Antoniuk/Anadolu via Getty Images
In his address on Tuesday night, Zelenskyy assured Ukrainians he had no intention of undermining the work of either agency, hinting that the changes were needed to safeguard the bodies from Russian influence. “The anti-corruption infrastructure will work, only without Russian influence — it needs to be cleared of that. And there should be more justice,” he posted online.