Name: Why Zelenskyy reversed course on anti-corruption reform | DW News
Uploaded: 2025-07-25T17:05:24.000Z
Duration: 16 min 43 s
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Adverbs of manner

Ukraine's anti-corruption infrastructure was actually functioning very well.

Adverbs of degree

The speed and the changes in the law, those are concerning and I have not seen a good explanation for those and I think that is what has really riled up the public.

This week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky faced huge protests after rushing through a law which stripped two anti-corruption agencies of their independence.

He has since backtracked, telling Ukrainians their protests are not falling on deaf ears.

I asked Anastasia Fedyk, Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Berkeley and a member of the non-profit Economist for Ukraine, to explain what's happened.

President Zelensky has responded to the protests inside Ukraine and concerns raised by foreign allies and has now proposed a new draft law that would safeguard the independence of the two anti-corruption agencies, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, which handles investigations and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor.

Now, the exact details are not yet fully public.

However, what we do know is that the agencies, NABU and SAP, have issued statements that they were consulted in the writing of the new draft law and that they do appear satisfied that the proposal would ensure their independence and would correct the issues from Tuesday's law.

Before the new draft law was announced, I asked Anastasia to tell us about the role of Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies and what might have motivated Zelensky to revoke their independence in the first place.

Let me give a little bit of background first, just to kind of set the stage of what Ukraine's anti-corruption infrastructure actually looks like, because it is a pretty unique setup.

So after 2014, when Ukraine has taken that break, with Russia moved closer to the EU and really tried to battle those issues of corruption and government inefficiency, Ukraine set up a dedicated anti-corruption ecosystem, which includes four key bodies.

So there is the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, which handles investigations into potential corruption cases.

There's a specialized anti-corruption prosecution body, which does the prosecution of these cases.

The High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine, which is actually a dedicated court system to corruption cases.

And then finally, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention, which of course does monitoring and prevention of potential cases from arising.

These agencies were deliberately separated from the standard sort of chain of prosecution and commitment.

So they were not under the Office of the Prosecutor General until this week, effectively.

The appointment of leadership positions to these agencies was basically also independent.

These were not political appointees, they were not appointed by the president.

They were made through multi-stakeholder processes that would involve international experts, civil society, and so on.

So really a high level of independence that we do not actually see in other countries.

So US, Germany, France, Italy, they would not have that kind of setup.

So it was a system that was specifically designed to be structurally insulated from any political influence.

And the law that we saw quickly pass through this week basically reversed that insulation, that separation for two of the agencies.

For the investigation agencies, so the NABU, and the prosecution agencies, so the SAPO.

The High Court and the prevention agencies remained as they were.

The issue is that this was done abruptly.

It was done not following sort of proper protocol.

For example, the law was kind of stated to concern legal matters related to missing persons in Ukraine.

That's how the law was written in its first reading back in January.

And then the amendments effectively added these parts where the Prosecutor General, who is a political appointee, would have these new powers over the investigation and the prosecution corruption-related bodies.

Although opposition parties in Parliament were sort of already trying to speak out against it and then signed pretty much immediately.

And of course, that abruptness has caused quite a discontent, quite a lot of protest in Ukraine, which has a very engaged civil society and very engaged politically public.

Tell us a little bit about what these two agencies were doing in the decades since they were founded.

What kind of schemes have they been uncovering and what might have motivated Zelensky to place them under government control?

So quite a lot of activity, actually, in these agencies.

They have dealt with a number of really high profile cases over the years that were uncovered that were prosecuted by these agencies, including politicians that would be aligned with the leading party.

So in that sense, Ukraine's anti-corruption infrastructure was actually functioning very well.

So if we're going to compare it to peers, including leading developed economies, there's not always that level of accountability.

So basically, immediate response in terms of being let go from positions, being prosecuted, serving prison sentences even, as we've seen achieved in Ukraine through these and other agencies.

Again, the civil society in Ukraine is very engaged, very sensitive to any kind of before 2014.

So this was really set up as kind of a state of the art infrastructure to battle that.

And what we've seen is, for example, the chief justice of the Supreme Court was caught taking bribes.

I think it was around $2 to $3 million in 2023.

He was immediately dismissed from his position and he was being prosecuted.

So in that sense, the response was actually in many ways more immediate, stronger and functioned, I would say, even better than we see in Europe and the US.

So this was an incredibly effective system.

Then all of a sudden, a law was introduced at 8 a.m.

Honestly, I'm not privy to President Zelensky's thinking, unfortunately.

I have spoken to both current members of parliament who were there, to protesters who are out there now, former civil servants, as well as civil society leaders.

And there are conflicting narratives around the motivations for sort of what might have caused the move.

Of course, the stated motivation includes ensuring that there aren't Russian influences in these bodies.

Some other operational considerations include things like the difficulty or inefficiency or the additional operational overhead of effectively having two prosecutor generals and managing these two separate verticals, one specifically for corruption matters, one for everything else.

Again, this is something that is above and beyond what we see in other legal systems.

So there is kind of a little more overhead there.

But of course, the kind of the speed and the changes in the law, those are concerning.

And I frankly have not seen a good explanation for those.

And I think that is what has really riled up the public.

And I think an explanation is owed to the public, as well as to the international community.

Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about that response.

You've mentioned the huge protesters, levels of protests that turn out on the street.

There's been criticism from European allies, as well, who say this damages the country's bid for EU membership.

Do you think Zelensky expected this level of response?

Again, the decision boggles me, so it's difficult to imagine what exactly, what kind of thinking was going through, because it does seem a natural response inside Ukraine.

So again, Ukrainian civil society is incredibly engaged and has incredibly high standards that they hold their own government to.

It's sort of like the single thing that Ukrainian civil society will most easily criticize or kind of get upset at is their own government.

And the reason, of course, is history, is the years of Soviet rule and kind of before that, the Russian rule, and then the pro-Russian presidents that they had before 2014.

So they've had so many bad experiences that they're incredibly easy to rile up.

And I mean, last week, I was speaking to the BBC about the potential, right, attempts by the Trump administration to bring the Federal Reserve kind of more under, right, control and less independence.

And of course, we do not see that kind of response in the US to potential concentration of US government as we do in Ukraine.

And the reason is differential kind of trust in government is that in the US people's default trust in Ukraine, they are very demanding.

And so I think it's, to me, puzzling that he would, that President Zelensky would not have anticipated this type of response.

And of course, trust within the country then spills over, right, to perceptions abroad.

And so in that sense, it's also not at all surprising that he would hear the discontent from his foreign partners as well.

Zelensky has now promised to introduce a new bill to strengthen the rule of law in Ukraine.

What would that piece of legislation have to contain to satisfy you that corruption is being taken seriously?

So the question here is to satisfy me or to satisfy everybody else in the Ukrainian civil society.

And because, as I pointed out, I think in many ways, corruption in Ukraine was taken more seriously than in many places abroad.

But the reason for that is history and the fact that Ukrainians are incredibly sensitive to these matters because of their traumatic experiences in the past.

And so I think that is a big issue, is the kind of the potential damage to trust with the public inside Ukraine.

And that, I think, will take a little bit more to repair than a quick backtrack.

I think they're going to be the people protesting or the people who are now kind of having potential issues and worries about what their government is effectively doing are going to need to be very careful in terms of taking a look at that new law that's being drafted and of how much does it insulate these agencies and basically also to what extent does it prevent the procedural issues that we've seen?

Because I don't think it's necessarily that corruption is somehow an issue that's greater in Ukraine than in other countries.

What I personally have been worried about this week is the way that the law was passed, right, this abruptness, the speed, the lack of clear motivation and reasoning behind it.

And I think that is something that might run a little bit deeper in terms of not just overhauling a single law, but also going a little bit further in terms of how do we ensure that the rule of law and the government function and the trust that the population has in that gets restored and remains strong.

You mentioned the comparison with other countries, but Ukraine really does rank very low on measurements of corruption.

First of all, a lot of those measures reliance on perception indices.

And as I mentioned, Ukrainians are extremely sensitive and they're extremely demanding to their own governments.

So basic things like in my son's elementary school in the US, there is a separate little nonprofit foundation attached to the school where the parents can fundraise for additional resources for the school.

Something like that in Ukraine would be viewed very critically, but it's completely normal in the US.