MOSCOW, July 22. /TASS/. Kiev’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko has joined the protesters against a controversial law effectively stripping the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office of their independent status.

"[Kiev’s Mayor Vitali] Klitschko has arrived at the rally against the elimination of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office," Verkhovna Rada (national parliament) member Alexey Goncharenko (put on Russia’s register of terrorists and extremists) wrote on his Telegram channel and posted Klitschko’s photo.

In recent years, Klitschko has been conflicting with the Ukrainian authorities, especially with Vladimir Zelensky. He has been accusing Ukraine’s leadership of seeking excessive centralization, exerting pressure, staging mass searches and initiating criminal cases under invented pretexts.

In 2013, Vitali Klitschko was among the organizers of maidan protests ((the term "Maidan" was coined after Kiev’s central Independence Square, or Maidan Nezalezhnosti, to refer to anti-government riots) and the state coup that ousted President Viktor Yanukovich and Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov.

Rallies are being held already in a number of Ukrainian cities in protest of a controversial law effectively stripping the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office of their independent status that was passed by the Verkhovna Rada on Tuesday.

Under the law, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office will be under the authority of the prosecutor general, who will be able to influence the activity of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Apart from that, the law lifts the ban on transferring cases from the Bureau to other agencies, which means that the prosecutor general will be able to exempt cases from the Bureau and transfer them to other prosecutors. According to the Ukrainian media, this law will seriously impact the work of both the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the National Agency on Corruption Prevention, which controls tax returns.