Ukraine’s first anti-government protests since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion took place on July 22 as thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets to express anger and dismay over what critics see as a campaign to strip the country’s anti-corruption agencies of their independence. For more than a decade, Ukrainians have been fighting a two-front war: against Russian aggression and against high-level political corruption. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised “victory over corruption” after his 2019 election and has become a worldwide symbol of freedom since the full-scale Russian war began in 2022. So his administration’s moves this week to gut independent anti-corruption agencies are puzzling, to say the least.
On July 21, law enforcement agencies raided the offices of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and declared investigations into fifteen NABU employees, allegedly as part of an ongoing effort to prosecute traffic violations. This sort of harassment on obscure charges has plagued other investigative agencies and individuals, but rarely was it used against institutions like NABU, which was created in 2014 as an independent body to tackle high-level government corruption. While NABU has had its problems, Ukrainian and Western experts widely acknowledge it as one of the country’s most important post-Maidan reform projects.
Unfortunately, this was no petty shake down. Law enforcement—led by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Prosecutor General’s Office—announcedthat the centerpiece of its investigation was charges of treason against a pro-Russian member of parliament who allegedly worked with NABU detectives to influence investigations at the behest of Russian intelligence services. The SBU, whose leadership is chosen by the president of Ukraine, named two of NABU’s top detectives as having connections to Fedor Khyrstenko, the lawmaker charged with acting in Kremlin interests against Ukraine. They also alleged the detectives helped Ukrainian oligarchs flee the country to avoid criminal charges.
Voice of Ukraine 