‘Return to the dark days’: Protests take aim at Zelensky for first time since Russian invasion

Kyiv: Thousands of people gathered in the streets of the Ukraine capital to protest moves by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government to weaken anti-corruption institutions, in the country’s first major anti-government demonstration in more than three years of war.

The protest outside the president’s office in central Kyiv on Tuesday night, including civilians and soldiers, was the most significant fracture in the national unity that has helped Ukraine survive a gruelling and bloody fight against a Russian invasion.

A woman holds a phone during a protest in central Kyiv on Tuesday against a law aimed at regulating anti-corruption bodies.Credit: AP

The government did not immediately make a statement on the gathering.

“My husband is in the trenches, and this is not what they are fighting for,” said Kateryna Amelina, 31. “This could be the destruction of 10 years of work by civil society.”

The demonstration, promoted widely on social media, came hours after Ukraine’s parliament, controlled by Zelensky’s party, passed a measure stripping away the independence of two agencies responsible for investigating and prosecuting corruption.

It gives Ukraine’s prosecutor general, appointed by the president, new powers over anti-corruption agencies.

Late on Tuesday night, the parliament’s website updated the bill’s status to show Zelensky had signed it into law. There was no immediate confirmation from the president’s office.

On Monday, the security services raided the offices of the two agencies, which have been looking into people in Zelensky’s circle, claiming they had been infiltrated by Russian intelligence.

The crowd grew on Tuesday evening as the sun set on a hill just above Maidan Nezalezhnosti, a central square in Kyiv where more than a decade ago crowds gathered to protest the corruption of the Kremlin-aligned president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych, leading to his ouster.

“It is a very sad moment because for me it means we are going back in time when we had this same discussion,” said Mustafa Nayyem, a former member of parliament who took part in the earlier protests. “It is very sad and very dangerous.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in parliament in Kyiv last week.Credit: AP

Amelina said her husband had called her from the front, upset by news of the parliamentary vote, and told her that many other soldiers were also unhappy.

Activists and analysts see the legislation as part of a broader crackdown on independent news media, voices critical of the government and government oversight groups, both public and private, threatening hard-won progress towards democracy.

One of Ukraine’s most prominent anti-corruption activists, and a frequent critic of the Zelensky administration, Vitaliy Shabunin, was accused in a court proceeding last week of evading military service and fraud.

He has denied the accusation, which his many domestic and international defenders call baseless, even farcical. If convicted, he could face a decade in prison.

There was a widespread view in Ukraine that Zelensky and his administration had grown cloistered, losing touch with the people.

“It’s impossible to tolerate what’s been happening these past weeks and months – the attacks on civic activists, the attacks on the anti-corruption system,” said Iryna Nemyrovych, 36, the director of the Ukrainian Health Centre, an independent research group.

“We’ve seen all of this before.”

Dmytro Koziatynskyi, a veteran of the Russo-Ukrainian war, was one of many influential figures calling for protests.

“Time is not on our side,” he said in a message shared widely online.

A man waves a flag during the Kyiv protest on Tuesday.Credit: AP

“We must take to the streets tonight and urge Zelensky to prevent a return to the dark days of Yanukovych. See you this evening!”

The demonstrators were largely young and peaceful, and there was little police presence, with only few security personnel at the barricades outside the presidential complex of offices.

There were also protests in Lviv and other cities as public anger swelled and word spread of the gatherings.

One demonstrator in Kyiv, Sashko Adamliuk, 25, said Ukraine was fighting for more than land.

“Our democracy is under attack,” he said. Like many of those gathered, he feared the government was systematically stifling dissent.

Oleksandr Teren, 29, a veteran who lost both his legs in combat, said the actions of the government were an affront to all those who had sacrificed so much in the war.

“We are fighting for a transparent government, and this decision hurts the motivation of the soldiers fighting for a European Ukraine,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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