They stayed together until the very last minute. On Thursday, July 31, as MPs in the Ukrainian Parliament voted by a wide majority for a law to restore the independence of two anti-corruption agencies tasked with investigating financial crimes among the country’s elites, hundreds of young people shouted out their joy and pride after several days of protest. President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the law a few hours later, officially confirming it and bringing an end to the most serious political crisis the country had faced in three and a half years of war.
This move marked a true reversal for the head of state, coming more than a week after he pushed through a law on July 22 that had eliminated the independence of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). The president’s decision drew sharp criticism from Kyiv’s European partners, as well as from sections of the Ukrainian public, who turned out for the largest protests since the war began. Thousands of Ukrainians – most of them young, as conscription for men starts at age 25 – gathered in Kyiv, Lviv and Dnipro to express their disagreement, despite the state of war.
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