It took ten years to build them. It took one hour in parliament to bring them down.
From: Euromaiden Press BY ALYA SHANDRA
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed the law anyway.
Even as thousands of Ukrainians demonstrated in Kyiv, Lviv, and Dnipro—the first major protests against his government since Russia’s invasion—even as the European Union demanded explanations and G7 ambassadors expressed “serious concerns,” Ukraine’s president destroyed his country’s independent anti-corruption infrastructure with a single signature.
The reason was simple—and it reveals everything wrong with how Ukraine still operates.
Corruption investigators were closing in on Zelenskyy’s inner circle. Two men from his closest orbit faced charges: Oleksiy Chernyshov, the only Cabinet minister invited to Zelenskyy’s COVID birthday party, and Tymur Mindich, his business partner from the Kvartal 95 comedy studio.
Rather than let them face justice, Zelenskyy chose to eliminate the investigators— NABU and SAPO.
This matters because when anti-corruption agencies finally reached the president’s actual family—not just random officials, but his birthday party guests and business partners—Ukraine witnessed its first real test of whether it had outgrown the post-Soviet patronage trap.
The answer came swift and brutal: personal loyalty won, institutional accountability lost.
Voice of Ukraine 