The hundreds of Ukrainians who protested on Tuesday evening against moves to slash the independence of top anti-corruption agencies rallied outside the Ivan Franko theatre in central Kyiv because, activists said, it was the closest they could get to the headquarters of president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s administration.
The theatre sits on a leafy square at the foot of steps leading up to Bankova, which is the name of the guarded street where the presidency is situated and also a synonym in Ukraine for presidential power and related political machinations.
Even in wartime – and in startling contrast to their neighbours in Russia – Ukrainians reject any notion that their leaders should exist in some sequestered space where decisions cannot be questioned and authority must not be challenged.
It is infuriating to many Ukrainians that Zelenskiy and key aides seem to have forgotten or ignored lessons from the nation’s recent history when ramming through a law that effectively makes the country’s main anti-graft institutions subordinate to a prosecutor general who is a presidential appointee.
RM Block
Both the Orange Revolution in 2004-5 and the Maidan Revolution, or Revolution of Dignity, in 2013-14 were at heart mass protests against corruption and the impunity of a political-economic elite in Ukraine that did not feel bound by the rules that applied to less privileged citizens. The same urge for change prompted Ukrainians to elect Zelenskiy – a comedian and businessman with no political experience – in 2019.
With its pivot to the West in 2014, Ukraine aimed for European Union membership and committed to rooting out graft at all levels. With EU backing it created a national anti-corruption bureau (Nabu) and specialised anti-corruption prosecutor’s office (Sapo).
These agencies have had some success despite facing obstruction from vested interests and a sometimes hostile attitude from Bankova. Zelenskiy said on Tuesday night that they would now be more efficient and “cleansed” of “Russian influence”.
Civil society has long criticised the power held by Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, and his deputies, who oversee the running of state structures ranging from law enforcement to arms production.
The influence of unelected officials around Zelenskiy has only grown during Russia’s devastating full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has brought a surge of western funding and weapons and also a suspension of elections and many of the checks and balances on presidential power that function in peacetime.
Elections would be impossible under daily Russian missile and drone strikes, but Ukraine’s civil society and free media continue to hold Zelenskiy and his allies to account.
As shown by Tuesday’s protests in Kyiv and other cities – the biggest in nearly three-and-a-half years of all-out war – Ukrainians who detest the dictator in the Kremlin will not tolerate any whiff of autocracy from Bankova.
