Zelenskyy signs bill curbing Ukraine anti-corruption agencies : NPR

People sing while holding banners during a demonstration against a law targeting the anti-corruption institutions in the center of kyiv, Ukraine on Tuesday.

Alex Babenko / AP

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Alex Babenko / AP

Kyiv, Ukraine – A new controversial law eliminating the independence of the main anti -corruption dogs of Ukraine sparked the country’s first major manifestations since the Russia’s large -scale invasion 3 years ago.

Despite the ban on mass gatherings under martial law, thousands of Ukrainians have descended into the streets of kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, singing “shame” and “Ukraine is not Russia”. The surveys have shown several times that Ukrainians are as concerned about corruption in the country as to end the war.

“It is completely a betrayal of all those who are on the front line, for all those who fight for our freedom, for all those who fight so that Ukraine is not Russia,” said Polina Tymchenko, a 29 -year -old doctor, at NPR. “And it’s certainly not an honest decision.”

The demonstrations occurred just before the third series of cease-fire talks between Kyiv and Moscow in Istanbul. The two parties made little progress towards a cease-fire during the previous negotiations.

The Ukrainian parliament, controlled by the servant of the people of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, adopted the law on Tuesday and Zelenskyy signed it later in the day. The law gives the Attorney General of Ukraine, appointed by Zelenskyy, new powers on the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Special Office of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor.

In his night video address on Tuesday, Zelenskyy justified this decision by saying that corruption cases have taken too long to be the subject of an investigation under the agencies. He also suggested that agencies were compromised. Ukraine’s security service said on Monday said anti-corruption dogs had Russian moles.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the parliament session in Kyiv, Ukraine, July 17.

Vadym Sarakhan / AP

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Vadym Sarakhan / AP

“The anti-corruption infrastructure will work without Russian influences,” said Zelenskyy.

The anti-grafting agencies were created in the wake of the pro-democracy demonstrations of Euromaidan from Ukraine. The movement forced Viktor Yanukovych, a former notoriously corrupt president aligned with the Kremlin, to flee the country in 2014.

Mustafa Nayyem, a former investigative journalist who helped direct the demonstrations, continued to lead the Agency of the Government of Zelenskyy supervising the reconstruction of the country after the war. As part of his work, he and his team created transparency mechanisms to avoid transplant. He resigned last year, saying that the government of Zelenskyy knew the work of his agency.

Nayyem participated in the demonstrations on Tuesday, writing later on Facebook that the law “will not help us as a country”. He said there was a big gap between the young demonstrators who proved to be on Tuesday demanding a functional and transparent democracy and the legislators of the Parliament who voted for the bill.

“This gap concerns an understanding completely different from justice, responsibility and state,” wrote Nayyem. “For some, Ukraine is a country that has a future. For others, it is a territory that you have to grasp everything while you can.”

Marta Kos, the European Union enlargement Commissioner, said the law is a “step back” for Ukraine’s aspirations to join the EU in an article on X.

Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, who chairs the Committee for Freedom of Expression in the Ukrainian Parliament, voted against the bill. During Tuesday evening demonstration in kyiv, he told NPR that Zelenskyy seemed to be disconnected from the Ukrainians.

A woman has a telephone with a sign indicates “veto” during the protest against the law intended for the regulations of anti-corruption institutions in the center of kyiv, Ukraine on Tuesday.

Alex Babenko / AP

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Alex Babenko / AP

The president of a country at war, he said, “must feel the link with society. We see all the young people who are all pro-European, who believe in our democracy.”

Meaghan Mobbs, president of the RT Weatherman Foundation, a charity that supports Ukraine, and the daughter of President Trump’s special envoy in Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, wrote on X that the decision to adopt the law is “really, incredibly, a policy of the spirit.

The Kremlin, which has often characterized Zelenskyy as an illegitimate leader, described the demonstrations of “an internal case for Ukraine”, but used the opportunity to recycle discussion points that the Zelenskyy government had not spent money allocated to Ukraine by American taxpayers “to its planned ends”.

“There is a lot of corruption in the country,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday in his daily press point.

Charles Maynes of NPR contributed the Moscow reports.