LONDON, July 23. /TASS/. Vladimir Zelensky’s signing of the law that de-facto ends independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies may entail European Union sanctions, said Owen Matthews, an observer of the United Kingdom’s The Spectator daily.
In his words, "Zelensky’s government seems to have seriously miscalculated the mood of ordinary Ukrainian people."
"Perhaps more seriously, Zelensky seems to have badly misread the room in terms of the impact on his backers in the West," he said in an opinion piece, headlined ‘Zelensky’s war on Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies is a disaster.’
"International anti-corruption bodies, Ukrainian civil society groups, the independent Ukrainian press and Western diplomats have all been warning Zelensky that passing this law could jeopardize Ukraine’s EU accession process, cancel its visa-free regime, and even trigger EU sanctions against Ukraine. But he went ahead and did it anyway," the observer wrote.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, passed the bill with 263 votes in favor. 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.
The law caused outrage in Ukrainian society. According to the Ukrainian Obshchestvennoye.Novosti news outlet, around 2,000 people gathered for a rally in in Kiev to protest against the law. similar protest rallies were held in Lvov, Dnepr (formerly known as Dnepropetrovsk), Odessa, Poltava, Ternopol, and Rovno.
Protesters in Kiev also demanded the resignation of Vladimir Zelenky’s office head Andrey Yermak. Kiev’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko joined the protesters. Demonstrators in Lvov threatened to stage another maidan (the term "Maidan" was coined after Kiev’s central Independence Square, or Maidan Nezalezhnosti, to refer to anti-government riots).