Zelensky united Ukraine to fight Russia – but now he’s accused of destroying their democracy

 As summer shadows lengthened over Kyiv on Tuesday evening, thousands of Ukrainians, most of them women and some veterans of the war, gathered a few blocks from the presidential office on Bankova Street, chanting “shame”.

It was the first and only significant protest against Volodymyr Zelensky’s government since the full-scale Russian invasion began, fracturing the national unity that has helped Ukraine resist Russia’s aggression and setting alarm bells ringing among Kyiv’s allies.

Credit: Igor Zakharenko

A few hours earlier, the Supreme Rada, Ukraine’s single-chamber parliament, had passed a bill pushed by the president’s office that brings the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (Sapo) under the control of the prosecutor general, who in turn is appointed by Zelensky himself.

The changes, forced through in record time with what opposition members described as a “brutal” disregard for parliamentary procedure, stripped the agencies of their most important attribute: political independence. Instead, the prosecutor general now has the power to reassign or redirect investigations.

The reforms come in the wake of anti-corruption agents having launched an investigation into a sitting minister, and Zelensky’s government, which says it is determined to root out Russian spies, having dispatched the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to hunt for saboteurs within Nabu.

Accusations of a power grab

On Tuesday, the simmering tension reached a sudden denouement. In just a few hours, Zelensky and his ruling party had proposed, voted through, and signed into law the new bill.

But even before Zelensky signed off on the reforms, protesters were already on the streets of Kyiv and other cities, gathering to denounce what they saw as a power grab in a country that has battled hard to make its way to democracy. Some have accused the president of attempting to protect members of his inner circle from investigations pursued by the anti-graft agencies.

Meanwhile, on the vast frontline of the war with Russia, serving soldiers expressed astonishment and outrage – sentiments that were echoed in European capitals friendly to Kyiv’s cause.

As pressure mounted with a second wave of protests on Wednesday night, Zelensky appeared to backtrack.

Having “heard what [the] people are saying”, he promised to present a new bill in two weeks time that would safeguard the “independence of anti-corruption institutions”.

The president’s Wednesday evening address did not divulge further details, however, and his intervention may ultimately prove unable to mollify those who braved the threat of Russian air raids to take to the streets.

“He promised to fix it, but everyone is really cautious and waiting to see the text of the draft law,” says Katya, a 40-year old NGO worker from Kyiv who joined Wednesday night’s demonstrations.

And Zelensky, she adds, should not underestimate the depth of annoyance he has stirred up.

“Kyiv was constantly bombed for the past few months. Mostly at night. Everyone is sleep-deprived and totally exhausted. So instead of getting some rest while it’s relatively calm, we have to go out and protest this s---,” she adds. “People are angry. Most protestors understand that Russia is using the footage in their propaganda to discredit Ukraine. But at the same time, people feel that this is their only option to be heard.”

‘Zelensky is becoming autocratic’

Oleksiy Goncharenko, an MP from Odesa, was among just 13 deputies to vote against the changes. “On Tuesday morning, when I was planning to go to parliament, I didn’t know that the law which they made the amendments to even existed,” he says. “They got it through committee, then they got it through parliament, then the speaker signed [it], and then the president signed, and then it was published, all in 10 hours – which is unbelievable.” (The bill passed with the support of 263 MPs, with another 13 abstaining.)

Goncharenko, an open political opponent of Zelensky, believes the cause of this was a legislative “blitzkrieg” driven by panic within the president’s office over investigations closing in on members of the administration. Critics argue that the changes will reduce the chances of high-ranking officials guilty of corruption facing justice.

Others have suggested the changes may be an attempt by Zelensky – whose popularity ratings have gradually slipped as the war with Russia has dragged on – to consolidate his own power.

Last month, Nabu said it suspected Oleksiy Chernyshov, a sitting deputy prime minister, of receiving a $345,000 (£255,000) kickback in a property development scheme.

Chernyshov told the Kyiv Independent, Ukraine’s main English-language paper, at the time that he was “absolutely not involved” and that he would not be resigning from his post. He was, however, dismissed in last week’s government reshuffle.

Then, on Monday, while Nabu chief Semen Kryvonos was visiting counterparts in London, Ukraine’s SBU security service conducted several raids on the bureau in what it said was a search for a Russian mole.

The bureau protested the raids, warning they could undermine ongoing investigations. The next day, it was stripped of its independence in a hurried vote in the Rada.

“This is a logical development of all recent moves. Zelensky is becoming autocratic. He’s already autocratic. And yesterday he made maybe his final choice in this direction, because that’s absolutely unacceptable. So he ruined the independence of anti-corruption bodies,” Goncharenko says.

Not everyone would go that far. Orysia Lutsevych, the deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Programme and head of the Ukraine forum at Chatham House, believes the word “autocrat” is an exaggeration.

“It’s not one man running the country in Ukraine. It’s a crony capitalist system where those in power need law enforcement for resource extortion and political pressure. So it’s a much finer balance […] than just being an autocrat,” she says.

Nor, Lutsevych adds, is the apparent aversion to independent law enforcement unique to Zelensky. “It’s a kind of curse of a Ukrainian political system that is built on a ‘liaison dangereuse’ between law enforcement and the office of the president. Whoever is in office, they feel fundamental discomfort at independent law enforcement. So they’re using wartime to reverse that,” she says.

Indeed, Petro Poroshenko, Zelensky’s predecessor as president, also clashed with anti-corruption NGOs, despite coming to power after the pro-European Maidan revolution of 2014. Given the opportunity, he too would probably have done away with Nabu and Sapo’s autonomy, Lutsevych speculates.

‘The most dangerous moment’

Nabu, set up with assistance from both the FBI and the EU, and Sapo emerged after the 2014 uprising that brought down the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.

The revolution was triggered by his U-turn on a planned association deal with the EU, but it was also a revolt against a culture of graft that many Ukrainians felt permeated the entire ruling class.

Nabu’s job is to investigate official corruption, while Sapo oversees Nabu’s work and conducts prosecutions based on its investigations.

Both were created under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Commission, which demanded visible progress on anti-corruption measures in exchange for loans and advancement toward EU accession. Unlike their toothless predecessors, both agencies enjoyed full independence from the government.

In the following years of war, disappointment and fears of backsliding that followed, Nabu and Sapo’s continued existence – and autonomy – came to be seen, both inside and outside Ukraine, as one of the indisputable gains of the 2014 revolution. The agencies have enjoyed a string of successes despite frequently clashing with both the Poroshenko and Zelensky administrations.

It is fair to say Ukraine’s allies are not impressed by the ongoing drama in the war-torn nation.

Julia Fromholz, the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) anti-corruption division, expressed “deep concern about recent developments” in a letter to Zelensky’s office

One European official told Reuters that the Ukrainians were “testing the limits” of their allies’ patience, and described the move as “the most dangerous moment” yet for the independence of anti-corruption authorities.

But it is the backlash within Ukraine that has been most forthright.

The anti-corruption agencies themselves warned in a Telegram post on Tuesday that the law “could finally destroy the independence of the anti-corruption system in Ukraine”.

Within hours, protests had begun nationwide, spreading to Lviv in the west, and to central Dnipro and Odesa in the south. The current mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, was among those who attended the demonstration in the capital. Some carried biting placards that read: “Welcome to Russia.”

Credit:Bohdan Ben

Meanwhile, prominent Ukrainians, many of them war heroes, took to social media to express disbelief. One Kyiv university announced it was expelling six graduates, now MPs, from its alumni community for voting for the bill.

Even Kyrylo Budanov, the mercurial head of military intelligence, weighed in with a warning that Ukraine needs “strong institutions”.

Chief of staff under the scanner

Why would Zelensky make such a misstep?

Perhaps, Lutsevych speculates, he has lost touch with the public mood in Ukraine because he spends so much time being feted abroad by foreigners who admire his undeniable heroism. (A poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology last month found that 65 per cent of Ukrainians trust Zelensky, while 30 per cent do not – a drop of 11 percentage points from May, but still a rating that other Western leaders would undoubtedly envy.)

“Either that or he does not fully understand the implications of what he is doing, and he is presented by his courtiers wrong information about how much the public will accept and how much the West will swallow,” says Lutsevych.

Could some other scheming be afoot? For much of Zelensky’s presidency, officials and commentators in Kyiv have whispered about the ambitions of Andriy Yermak, the president’s chief of staff.

An old friend of Zelensky’s from his show business days, Yermak has gained a reputation as both a gatekeeper to the president and a formidable political operator in his own right – a kind of Svengali or grand vizier who it is dangerous to cross and who is determined to fill the government with close allies.