KYIV: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised a quick new plan on Wednesday (Jul 23) to fight corruption, after a law curbing the independence of anti-graft agencies triggered the first street protests of the war and rare rebukes from European allies.
Opposition lawmakers and European officials called on Wednesday for Kyiv to reverse the law, which Zelenskyy signed overnight. It was rushed through parliament on Tuesday a day after the security services arrested two anti-corruption officials for suspected Russian ties.
In his nightly televised address, Zelenskyy said the corruption fighting agencies – an investigating agency known as NABU and a prosecutor’s office known as SAPO – would continue to function “but without any Russian influence”.
“It all must be cleansed,” he said.
In the morning, he met officials including both agencies’ heads and said he would unveil a new plan to fight corruption within two weeks.
“We hear society,” he wrote on Telegram. “We all have a common enemy – the Russian occupiers, and the protection of the Ukrainian state requires sufficient strength of the law enforcement and anti-corruption systems, and therefore a real sense of justice.”
In a joint statement later on Wednesday, NABU and SAPO said they wanted their independence restored through legislation.
STRONGEST CRITICISM OF THE WAR
The law prompted some of Ukraine’s European allies to deliver their strongest criticism of Zelenskyy’s government since Russia’s invasion in 2022. Thousands of people took to the streets in Kyiv and other large Ukrainian cities late on Tuesday to protest, the first such demonstrations of the war.
“This is complete nonsense from the President’s Office,” Solomiia Telishevska, 20, a student in Kyiv on holiday, told Reuters. “This contradicts what we are fighting for and what we are striving for, namely to (join) the European Union.”
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