Thousands took to the streets across Ukraine Tuesday evening in protest of a move by President Volodymyr Zelensky that would further consolidate his power.
Zelensky approved amendments that put control of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) and Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (Sap) in the hands of the general prosecutor, who happens to be appointed by the president. Ukrainians see this as a path to more power in the hands of a few and less power for the people. Protests broke out in the capital, Kyiv, as well as in Lviv, Dnipro, and Odesa, over the matter, according to reports.
BREAKING: Mass protests have erupted in Kyiv, Ukraine against President Volodymyr Zelensky.
This is the first known major protest against the Ukrainian leader.
Thousands of people have turned out in the streets of Kyiv to protest moves by Zelensky’s government to block… pic.twitter.com/lmyGobPgu5
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) July 22, 2025
“Nothing Is Transparent”
One of the protesters, 18-year-old Vladyslava Kirstyuk, told U.K.-based news outlet Independent, “I know what it means for one person to have all the power, when nothing is transparent and everything is working against you. I don’t want it to be the same for us here.”
A member of Parliament who voted against the measure, Oleksiy Goncharenko, said this was Zelensky’s will. He expressed the belief that it would result in “the end of the independence of anti-corruption bodies inside Ukraine.”
Zelensky said the anti-corruption bodies would still carry out their tasks “but without any Russian influence.” Russian influence is the official reason for this recent development, as it has been for crackdowns on many other institutions and people since 2022. According to the BBC, before the law was passed, Ukraine Security Service arrested suspected Russian spies within Nabu. After the protests, on Wednesday, Zelensky met with anti-corruption and security officials and vowed to create a “joint plan” to fight corruption within a couple of weeks, reportedly.
EU Leaders Worried
Ukraine created the anti-corruption agencies about 10 years ago at the behest of Western powers as part of an effort to fight endemic graft, which is a fact of life in Ukraine. The agencies were a “precondition” for stronger ties with the West. But now European Union leaders are worried that unchecked corruption will once again run rampant. European Commission spokesperson Guillaume Mercier told the BBC:
The European Union is concerned about Ukraine’s recent actions with regard to its anti-corruption institutions. The EU provides significant financial assistance to Ukraine, conditional on progress in transparency, judicial reform, and democratic governance.
Marta Kos, the European commissioner for enlargement, said, “The dismantling of key safeguards protecting Nabu’s independence is a serious step back.”
A major theme among those who are publicly criticizing the Zelensky government over this matter is the concern that Ukraine will revert “back” to its days of wild corruption, which lies on the faulty assumption that the former Soviet Union federation at some point broke with endemic corruption.
History of Corruption
Even after it was no longer part of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had long been considered among the most corrupt countries in Europe. The Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index from 2019 shows that Ukraine and Russia had nearly identical corruption scores, lower than every other country in the region at the time. Ukraine’s score was 30, while Russia’s was 28 (the lower the more corrupt). Bribery in the nation’s economic system was the main feature of grift.
According to the index, Ukrainian corruption supposedly took a hit after 2019. By 2023, Ukraine had worked its way up into the mid-30s, still equal to or slightly lower than every bordering nation but Russia and Turkey. But last year, it dropped by a point to 35. Only Russia and Belarus had lower scores.
Ukraine has never climbed out of the 30s, which, according to the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, is extremely corrupt. But a quick review of some of the Ukrainian government totalitarian-like policies since 2022 makes a compelling case that bribery is just one of many issues plaguing Ukrainians. The evidence suggests Ukraine is not only systematically corrupt but fundamentally tyrannical.
Marital Law
Since its war with Russia began, the Zelensky government has implemented series of policies that would be deemed autocratic by any reasonably objective measure.
Not long after Russia invaded, Zelensky declared martial law and signed a decree that combined Ukraine’s media outlets into one platform called “United News.” The decree “suspended” private media companies. The justification for this was to have a “unified information policy,” which is dictator-speak for establishing government control over media and turning all major avenues of information into state-controlled propaganda.
The Zelensky government justified this classic autocratic move as a measure to counter Russian disinformation.
Another victim of Zelensky’s martial-law decree was a dissenting political parties. Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council banned 11 political parties. The largest of these was the Opposition Platform – For Life, the second-largest party after Zelensky’s Servant of the People party. It held 44 seats in the 450-seat Ukrainian Parliament. Years later, in 2024, Ukraine also banned the Nash Krai party, which had won 1,694 seats in regional administration. According to reports, “the activities of the political party Nash Krai were banned; the property, funds, and other assets of the party, its regional, city, district organizations, primary cells, and other structural units were transferred to the state.”
The justification? Countering Russian influence.
