Zelenskyy is Ukraine and Russia to hold separate talks
Another peace negotiation will arise as Russia continues to intensify its long-range attacks on Ukraine.
Euronows
Kyiv, July 23 (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Voldodymyr Zelenskiy pledged a swift new plan on Wednesday to combat corruption after laws that curbed the independence of anti-graft agencies caused the first protests of the war and the suppression of rare reconstruction from European allies.
Opposition lawmakers and European officials called on Wednesday to turn the law back. Zelensky signed overnight. He rushed through Parliament on Tuesday a day after security guards arrested two anti-corruption officers for alleged Russian relations.
At the address that aired every night, Zelenskiy said the Corruption Battle Agency (the investigative agency known as Nabu and the prosecutor’s office known as SAPO) would continue to function “without any Russian influence.”
“It all has to be purified,” he said.
In the morning he met officials, including Nabu and the head of the Sapo, and said he would announce a new plan to fight corruption within two weeks.
“We listen to society,” he wrote in the telegram. “We all have a common enemy, the occupying Russians. Protecting the Ukrainian state requires sufficient strength in law enforcement and anti-corruption systems, and therefore a true sense of justice.”
The strongest criticism of war
The law has urged some of Kiev’s European allies to bring the strongest criticism of Zelenskiy’s government since the Russian invasion in 2022. Hundreds took them to the streets of Kiev and other large Ukrainian cities to protest late Tuesday.
“This is total nonsense from the president’s office,” 20-year-old Solomia Terryshevska, a Kiev student on the holiday, told Reuters. “This contradicts what we are fighting and what we are striving to: joining (participating) in the European Union.”
Critics of the law say the government appears to be trying to curb anti-corruption agencies’ work and protect officials.
Decades after Ukraine was considered one of the most corrupt countries in the world, its government cleaning was maintained as the most important condition for Kiev to join the European Union and integrate with the West more widely.
This issue poses a risk of hostility to Kyiv’s most loyal allies, especially during a dangerous period, when President Donald Trump is trying to smooth out his relationship with Washington, which frequently criticizes Zelenskiy.
“Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies are essential to its path of reform, and limiting them will be an important setback,” Dutch Foreign Minister Kasper Verdkamp said in a post in X.
Benjamin Haddad, French Minister of European Affairs, said it was not too late to reverse the decision.
Jaroslav Zheleznyak, a native of the Ukrainian opposition Horos Party, said he and several other lawmakers would propose a bill that “overturn this great shame that was adopted and signed,” and would also challenge the constitutional court law.
European dreams
The law was one day after the SBU domestic security agency in Kiev, one Nab official on allegedly unlawful Russian business relations with Moscow spies. They also conducted swept searches and arrests of many agency employees on other grounds, including road accidents.
Nab said that even if Russian invasions were a problem, crackdowns have gone too far, making it impossible to carry out its mission.
Corruption is consistently cited by investors and the general public as one of the key challenges facing Ukraine. Fighting is a condition that comes with billions of Western financial aid.
A Ukrainian political analyst said the law risks eroding society’s trust in Zelensky at a critical stage in the war with Russia.
The fierce battles along more than 1,000 kilometers of the front line are furious. Russian forces continue their shattering advances in the east, with hundreds of drones increasing the vicinity of daily attacks on Ukrainian cities.
“The public’s aspirations for the future of Europe are essential to maintaining the efforts of war,” said Valerii Pekar, a Kyiv-based analyst.
(Reporting by Peter Graff by Olena Harmashediting)
