{"id":287770,"date":"2025-07-24T11:22:26","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T11:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/287770\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T11:22:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T11:22:26","slug":"a-perilous-moment-for-ukraine-as-new-law-undermines-wartime-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/287770\/","title":{"rendered":"‘A Perilous Moment For Ukraine’ As New Law Undermines Wartime Unity"},"content":{"rendered":"

A poster held by a protester in Kyiv captured the anger and disbelief many Ukrainians are feeling after parliament passed a bill -\u2013 swiftly signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy -\u2013 that critics say will curb the independence<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>of two key anti-corruption agencies and badly set back the country\u2019s hard-won progress toward democracy and the rule of law.<\/p>\n

“This is not the future my brother died for,\u201d it read.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A protester in Kyiv on July 22 holds a sign that reads, “This is not the future my brother died for.”<\/p>\n

In just a few words, that message touched on at least a dozen years of Ukraine\u2019s tumultuous recent history, from the Maidan protests that pushed Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych from power in 2014 to Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine, which rages on 41 months after the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.<\/p>\n

As the country struggles to fend off the Russian invasion, which has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and uprooted millions of citizens, passage of the law restricting the autonomy of the anti-corruption agencies has, for many, raised a stark and simple question: What are we fighting for?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had two relatively independent institutions that at least created the appearance — or even the reality — of checks and balances. If we dismantle them, we\u2019ll slide into a fully controlled state,\u201d said Anton, a protester in the southeastern city of Dnipro, not far from the front. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to live in a country like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Major Setback?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The monthslong Maidan protests, which came to be known as the Revolution of Dignity, began as demonstrations of anger over government corruption, which has plagued Ukraine since independence in 1991 and was seen as getting worse.<\/p>\n

They swelled to massive proportions after Yanukovych abruptly abandoned plans to sign a trade agreement with the European Union and tightened ties with Russia instead.<\/p>\n

The Maidan protests and the defense against the Russian onslaught are just the most prominent examples of efforts by Ukrainians to safeguard independence \u2013- due to Moscow\u2019s aggression, still in peril almost 35 years after the Soviet collapse -\u2013 and to put as much distance as possible between Ukraine and both its Soviet legacy and the backward-looking, deeply unfree country Russia has become.<\/p>\n

Defenders of the institutions affected by the new law \u2013- the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) \u2013- say that a working system of independent anti-corruption bodies has been a crucial step in that direction for Ukraine, and that the legislation is a major setback.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn essence, Ukraine is being dragged 10 years back in terms of the fight against corruption,\u201d Dmytro Kozyatynskiy, a war veteran, said at the protest in Kyiv on July 22, where many of the demonstrators were young people like him.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy stripping NABU of its autonomy, they are gradually dismantling everything that\u2019s been built up over the years,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m in shock, my friends are in shock.\u201d<\/p>\n

The law \u201cstrips society of one of the greatest achievements since the Revolution of Dignity — independent anti-corruption institutions,\u201d Transparency International Ukraine<\/strong><\/a> said.<\/p>\n

\"Protesters<\/p>\n

Protesters in Kyiv on July 22 urge Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to veto a bill that limits the independence of two anti-corruption agencies. He signed the bill despite an outcry within Ukraine and from the West.<\/p>\n

As the protests that erupted in several cities after its passage show, it also threatens the national unity that has been an indispensable ingredient in Ukraine\u2019s defense against a country that Russian President Vladimir Putin \u2013- and many in the West \u2013- expected to come under Moscow\u2019s thumb within weeks of the start of the full-scale invasion.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust a few days ago Ukrainians were assuring me that whatever complaints they had about Zelenskyy, they understood the need for a united front in wartime. Now it’s unclear whether Zelenskyy can still count on national unity — a scenario the Kremlin has long been hoping for,\u201d Lucian Kim, senior Ukraine analyst<\/strong><\/a> at the International Crisis Group, wrote on Bluesky.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a perilous moment for Ukraine, for democracy in Ukraine and for democracy everywhere,\u201d Kim wrote.<\/p>\n

‘Government Arbitrariness’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zelenskyy defended the legislation, which was submitted by his own party, in a nightly address<\/strong><\/a> on July 22 and at a meeting with security and anti-corruption agencies on July 23. He contended that it would improve anti-graft efforts and remove \u201cRussian influence\u201d from the fight against corruption.<\/p>\n

Later on July 23, however, Zelenskyy said he would soon propose another bill<\/strong><\/a>, which he said would guard against Russian interference but would provide for “the independence of anti-corruption institutions.” He did not say whether he would seek to undo the law he signed a day earlier.<\/p>\n

Critics say the legislation plays into Putin\u2019s hands in ways that could weaken Ukraine\u2019s defense against the Russian onslaught, not strengthen it, by threatening to undermine unity among Ukrainians and sap support for Kyiv from the West at a crucial juncture<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

If it ends up jeopardizing Zelenskyy\u2019s position, that could also be welcomed by the Kremlin: One of the main initial goals of the invasion was to remove the president and replace him with a pro-Russian figure, and Putin has repeatedly sought to cast Zelenskyy as illegitimate.<\/p>\n

It could also amplify concerns in Washington about Ukrainian corruption at a time when US President Donald Trump has begun to lay a large part of the blame for the lack of progress toward peace on Russia and promised to increase supplies of weapons to Kyiv via Europe.<\/p>\n

Hitting the streets of cities that Russia has relentlessly targeted with increasingly intense drone and missile attacks, protesters voiced concern that Ukraine was now coming under attack from a new adversary: its own leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is government arbitrariness. We don\u2019t want to fight both Russia and our own government,\u201d Suzanna, a protester in the western city of Lviv, told RFE\/RL.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur country is already under massive external attack,\u201d said Darya, also in Lviv. \u201cWe must not destroy it from within.\u201d<\/p>\n

With reporting by RFE\/RL\u2019s Ukrainian Service<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A poster held by a protester in Kyiv captured the anger and disbelief many Ukrainians are feeling after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[126,41011,332,6323,67989,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-287770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-features","9":"tag-news-analysis","10":"tag-russia","11":"tag-russia-invades-ukraine","12":"tag-the-rundown-headline","13":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114907954962001854","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}