The test for Ukrainian democracy last month started with a self-inflicted wound by President Zelenskyy and his allies in the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament. On July 22, the Rada voted overwhelmingly to strip two of Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions—the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO)—of their independence by placing them under the direct control of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Ruslan Kravchenko. Not surprisingly, Kravchenko is considered loyal to Zelenskyy and his majority party in the parliament.
According to the government’s critics, President Zelenskyy asked parliament to pass this law to prevent investigations into corruption by some of his ministers and members of parliament from his party. Zelenskyy’s government denied these allegations and insisted that the NABU and SAPO had become ineffective institutions that needed reform. It also alleged that Russian spies had infiltrated these organisations. If true, ineffectiveness and spy penetration are serious problems for powerful entities such as the NABU and SAPO.
But Zelenskyy’s remedy—removing their independence and placing them under the control of a political ally—was flawed. Ukrainian civil society certainly thought so. Massive demonstrations against the government mobilized immediately—the biggest against Zelenskyy since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Strikingly, many of the protesters were young people who were not old enough to participate in the last major demonstrations in Ukraine during the 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity. Many European leaders sided with the protesters. The European Union even suspended aid to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy and his allies in parliament quickly responded to this backlash. A week later, on July 31, the Rada passed and Zelenskyy signed a new law restoring the independence of the NABU and SAPO, albeit with some minor restrictions still in place. Ukrainian civil society leaders rightfully claimed success. That’s how democracy is supposed to work. The hyperbolic claims by some Western critics that Zelenskyy had become a dictator proved unfounded. Autocrats like Putin do not respond to protesters. They arrest them. They kill them.
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