Protests in Ukraine after Zelensky approves bill curbing autonomy of anti-corruption agencies
Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday passed amendments to allow the country's general prosecutor, appointed by the president, strict control over two anti-corruption bodies – the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (Nabu) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (Sapo).
President Zelensky, whose party holds a majority in parliament, approved the amendments late on Tuesday. The changes would allow the general prosecutor to transfer cases from the agencies and reassign prosecutors.
The move has alarmed the country as this could result in granting more power to Ukraine's chief prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko, also seen as a Zelensky loyalist, to reassign corruption probes to investigators of their preference.
Shortly after the bill was cleared in parliament, hundreds of people gathered in Kyiv carried placards to protest. Protests also broke out in other cities like Dnipro, Lviv and Odesa.
'We chose Europe, not autocracy,' read one placard by a demonstrator. Another read: 'My father did not die for this.'
The vote was denounced on social media as a betrayal of Ukraine's decade-long geopolitical ambition. The protests echoed the long-standing sentiment of fighting corruption in Ukraine as critical to erasing a legacy of Russian rule.
Vladyslava Kirstyuk, 18, said memories of her childhood in occupied eastern Ukraine, after Russia's covert invasion in 2014, left a strong impression.
"I know what it means for one person to have all the power, when nothing is transparent and everything is working against you," she said. "I don't want it to be the same for us here."
Mr Zelensky also said he had spoken to Nabu chief Semen Kryvonos and other top prosecutors.
Mr Kryvonos had urged the Ukrainian president to not sign the fast-tracked bill, which he called an attempt to "destroy" Ukraine's anti-corruption infrastructure.
The two agencies – Nabu and Sapo were set up in the country after the 2014 Maidan revolution toppled a pro-Russian president and set Kyiv on a Western course. They are credited for their work to tackle corruption and graft in Ukraine during the war, levelling charges against lawmakers, ministers and a former deputy head of Zelensky's administration.
'Last week, we ran an editorial warning of an anti-democratic backslide in Ukraine. Today, it's happening in plain sight. This isn't what our people have been fighting and dying for, and it's devastatingly unfair to them,' said Olga Rudenko, the chief editor of Ukrainian publication The Kyiv Independent.
Ukraine is also facing backlash from anti-graft campaigners who have been alarmed since the government charged a top anti-corruption activist this month with fraud and evading military service. The move has been dubbed as political retribution by authorities for exposing corrupt officials.
Rooting out endemic corruption and graft is critical for Ukraine to join the European Union and also a key condition to receive western aid at a time the country is battered by war.
The European Union enlargement commissioner Marta Kos said she was "seriously concerned" by Tuesday's vote.
"The dismantling of key safeguards protecting NABU's independence is a serious step back," she said, adding that rule of law was at "the very centre" of EU accession talks.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
24 minutes ago
- BBC News
How Trump's 'secondary tariffs' on Russia could hit global economy
Despite being the world's most sanctioned country, Russia has continued to use its vast energy wealth to bankroll its war in President Donald Trump is hoping to change that. He has announced that sweeping new secondary tariffs will impact any country still trading with Russia if a ceasefire with Ukraine is not agreed by Friday 8 August. Secondary tariffs would see goods from any country that trades with Russia face a 100% tax when they are imported into the and gas are Russia's biggest exports, and Moscow's biggest customers include China, India and Turkey. "I used trade for a lot of things, but it's great for settling wars", said Trump last would not be the first time the Trump administration has imposed secondary tariffs, which are also in place to punish buyers of Venezuelan using them against Russia would have far bigger implications for the global remains the world's third biggest oil producer, behind only Saudi Arabia and the US itself. But its shipments have been falling this year, according to a Bloomberg analysis of ship-tracking data. Increased energy prices "The key channel by which secondary tariffs on buyers of Russian energy could impact the global economy would be through the level of energy prices," says Kieran Tompkins from the consultancy Capital the tariffs work, they will cut the flow of Russian oil and gas to global with less supply, prices could go up, just as they did when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That led to a spike in inflation around the world. President Trump says he isn't worried because of record US oil Tompkins points out that, this time, there are also other reasons to suggest the impact on prices would not be as marked. He explains that "the current backdrop is one where OPEC+ [the group of major oil producing countries and its allies] have significant spare capacity to draw upon."Russia has devised a whole system for avoiding existing sanctions, which could be useful for helping its trading partners avoid the secondary tariffs threatened by example, its so-called "shadow fleet" - consisting of hundreds of tankers with obscure ownership - could be used to conceal the origin of exported Russian oil and gas."Sanctions maintenance is as big a task as the imposition of sanctions in the first place," US sanctions expert Richard Nephew of Columbia University says. "That's because the party that is being sanctioned takes steps to evade them." Pricier iPhones from India Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 India has been the second biggest buyer of Russian oil, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. "They're fuelling the war machine. And if they're going to do that, then I'm not going to be happy," President Trump told US outlet CNBC on Tuesday. If secondary sanctions take effect, US companies buying goods from India will have to pay a 100% import tax - or tariff - when those products reach US idea is that it makes these goods so expensive that US businesses will choose to buy them cheaper from elsewhere, resulting in lost revenue for India. That, in turn, is supposed to deter India from buying Russian oil. And if Russia is left unable to sell its oil elsewhere because other countries face the same predicament, it will have less cash to finance the war in way in which Americans could experience higher prices as a result of new secondary tariffs is in their purchase of mobile phones from calls Trump's tariff threat over Russian oil 'unjustified'US firm Apple is moving much of its iPhone production to India - in particular the manufacturing of handsets that it wants to sell in the US. If these products are subject to the new tariffs, prices could double for US consumers. That is because tariffs are paid by the companies that import goods - and those companies tend to pass most, if not all, of their cost increases on to their to the US from India are already facing a 25% tariff as part of President Trump's broader trade shake-up, and he told CNBC that number could be raised "very substantially". India's government has accused the US of double standards, pointing to Washington's own continued trade with vast majority of that trade is made up of US imports from India which amounted to just over $3bn (£2.2bn) last year - although that's just 10% of 2021 levels. That trade is dominated by US purchases of raw materials for nuclear energy and fertilizers. Russia is a major global supplier of both. Derailing trade talks with China China is buying the most Russian oil, and a decision by President Trump to impose secondary tariffs on Chinese goods would be much more challenging to because US imports from China are worth five times as much as those from India, and a lot more of those imports are consumer goods such as toys, clothes and tariffs aimed at Beijing would also risk upsetting a much broader renegotiation of trade between the world's two biggest economies that Trump has been pursuing since his first term in office."This type of over-escalation is unlikely to impress the Chinese," says trade expert Professor Simon Evenett of IMD Business explains that it would be "very difficult" to peel the Chinese away from the Russians without a good reason, given how closely Presidents Xi and Putin have worked together in recent top of that, the last time Trump tried using triple-figure tariffs against China, he found it did not work - as it almost cut off all trade between the two move like that could add to inflationary pressures in the US, which Trump has long pledged to could also cost huge amounts of manufacturing jobs in China, at a time when its economy is already struggling on several fronts. Further harm to US-EU commerce Analysis by the Finland-based Centre for Research and Clean Air shows that the EU and Turkey are also still amongst the biggest buyers of Russian 2022, the EU was the number-one export destination for Russia, although that has been vastly reduced since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Brussels recently agreed to buy a lot more energy from the US, but some imports from Russia remain. In June, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, acknowledged the problem, saying "Russia has repeatedly attempted to blackmail us by weaponizing its energy supplies" as she laid out plans to end imports by the end of US-EU trade relationship is the biggest in the world, and the pair have just negotiated new trade terms which will see a 15% tariff be applied on most EU exports to the in the EU criticised that deal, saying the tariffs would harm European exporters. Now they also fear that secondary sanctions on the EU could do even more harm. Adding 100% tariffs for buying Russian energy could significantly reduce the amount of goods sold by the EU to the US. However the biggest sellers include pharmaceuticals and machinery, which may be hard to source from elsewhere - meaning Americans have little choice but to pay more. Potential Russian recession Russia's own economy has so far proven remarkably resilient since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, growing 4.3% last Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov recently warned that the country was "on the verge" of recession after a period of "overheating". The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is forecasting growth of just 0.9% this the secondary sanctions are successful in reducing demand for exports, they will push Russia closer to exact impact of the war on Russia's economy is hard to know, because Moscow has prevented a large amount of economic data from being published since the full-scale invasion - including on oil and gas a third of Russian government spending is funded by oil and gas money, but exports have been falling. Meanwhile, Putin is directing a bigger share of spending towards defence than at any time since the Cold War. Defence spending is believed to have reached 6.3% of contrast, Ukraine has been spending a huge 26% of the value of its far-smaller economy on the war. The difference explains why its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has repeatedly asked for external help from his tariffs are intended to help Zelensky by cutting the amount of money flowing into Russia, and he hopes bring an end to the death, suffering and destruction in Ukraine.
BBC News
24 minutes ago
- BBC News
Despite Trump's peace calls, Russian attacks on Ukraine double since inauguration
Russia has more than doubled the number of drones and missiles fired towards Ukraine since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, a BBC Verify analysis has found, despite his calls for a had already been rising under former President Joe Biden in 2024 but climbed sharply after Trump's election victory in November. Since he returned to office in January, recorded aerial attacks from Moscow have reached their highest levels of the his campaign Trump vowed to bring an end to fighting in just one day if returned to office. He claimed during his 2024 campaign that Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine could have been averted had a president who the Kremlin "respected" held in his efforts to achieve a ceasefire he has been accused at times of favouring Russia by critics, and his administration has paused deliveries of air defence munitions and other military supplies to Ukraine on two separate occasions. The pauses - announced in March and July and since reversed by the president - came as Russia steadily increased missile and drone production. According to Ukrainian military intelligence, ballistic missile construction in Russia grew by 66% over the past data reviewed by BBC Verify - based on daily incident reports issued by the Ukrainian Air Force - showed that Russia launched 27,158 munitions between 20 January - when Trump's presidency began - and 19 July, compared to 11,614 over the final six months of Biden's term."This brutal war was brought on by Joe Biden's incompetence, and it has gone on for far too long," White House deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement to BBC Verify. "President Trump wants to stop the killing, which is why he is selling American-made weapons to NATO members and threatening Putin with biting tariffs and sanctions if he does not agree to a ceasefire." In the opening weeks of the new administration, the White House issued a series of warm statements seemingly intended to entice President Vladimir Putin towards a settlement. During this period, Russian attacks on Ukraine briefly fell when compared to the final weeks of the Biden by February, when US diplomats led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's delegation for a summit in Riyadh, attacks had started to climb talks, which Rubio said were a starting point to bring an end to the war, have been followed by mediated discussions between Ukrainian and Russian officials in Turkey. Attacks peaked early last month, when Moscow launched 748 drones and missiles towards Ukraine on 9 July, according to the Ukrainian Air Force data. More than a dozen people were reportedly injured by the barrage and two were killed. While Trump has expressed anger at the escalating Russian attacks on several occasions, his mounting frustration does not appear to have had an impact on Moscow's 25 May, Russia launched its then-largest recorded barrage, prompting Trump to angrily ask: "What the hell happened to him [Putin]?"Since then, Russia has exceeded that number of reported launches on 14 occasions. Trump has responded by demanding that the Kremlin reach a peace deal with Ukraine by 8 number of Russian munitions penetrating Ukrainian air defences appears to be increasing, with explosions around the capital Kyiv becoming a daily part of life for residents of the city."Every time you go to sleep, you don't know if you're going to wake up the next morning, and that's just not a normal way to live," Dasha Volk, a journalist living in the city, told the BBC's Ukrainecast programme in June."Every time you hear an explosion or a missile flying over your head, lots of thoughts are going through my mind - I'm going to die now, things like that." Ukraine 'vulnerable' to aerial attacks Senator Chris Coons, a senior Democrat on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told BBC Verify that Trump's decision to suspend weapons supplies on two occasions and his broader approach to Russian relations may have convinced the Kremlin that it had the freedom to increase attacks."It's clear Putin feels emboldened by Trump's weakness and has increased his vicious assault on the Ukrainian people, repeatedly attacking hospitals and maternity wards, the Ukrainian power grid, and other civilian sites," he growing attacks have renewed calls for the US to send fresh supplies of Patriot anti-air batteries to Ukraine. The Patriots are the most capable and expensive air defence systems that Ukraine has. Each Patriot battery costs around $1bn (£800m), and each missile costs nearly $ has overturned the previous supply pauses and agreed to sell weapons to Nato members, who will in turn supply them to Kyiv. Trump appeared to imply that the deal would include fresh supplies of Patriot Bronk, an analyst focussing on the Russian military at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said restrictions on the supply of military equipment imposed by the White House had made Ukraine "vulnerable" to missile and drone he also noted that Russia has ramped up the production of missiles and so-called 'kamikaze' drones such as the Geran-2 - a domestically produced version of the Iranian Shahed drone. Mr Bronk said that Russia's increased stockpiles, coupled with "significant reductions" in supply of US interceptor missiles had encouraged Moscow to escalate its air campaign. Ukraine's Military Intelligence agency (HUR) recently told domestic media that Russia was now producing up to 85 ballistic missiles per month, up from 44 in April is reportedly producing 170 Geran drones per day, having established a massive manufacturing facility at Alabuga in the south of the a recent interview with Russian military TV, the facility's director Timur Shagivaleyev boasted that Alabuga had become "the largest combat drone production plant in the world", adding that his workers were producing nine times more units than initially images show the facility has expanded significantly since mid-2024, with a number of new warehouses built on the structures, including what appear to be expansions to worker dormitories, remain under construction. Senator Coons warned that the increase in production meant that Washington must make clear that it is not preparing to walk away from the conflict as some administration officials have threatened he could do, emphasising that peace can only be achieved through "surging security assistance".He added that President Trump must make it clear to Russia that it "cannot simply try to outlast the West"."In order to do that, he needs to maintain a consistent and sustained position on the war."Meanwhile, Ms Volk said that every day the Russian campaign drags on and Ukrainian interceptions fall public morale is hammered."People are getting tired because of these attacks, they really affect our lives," she said."We know what we are fighting for, but it becomes more difficult every year because everyone is getting exhausted. That's the reality." What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
Elon Musk's X 'played central role' in stoking racist riots, damning report finds
Amnesty International analysis found X's algorithm prioritises posts that are most likely to contain lies and hatred - and say nothing has changed amid heightened tensions Elon Musk's X played a "central role" in fuelling last year's racist riots as it is designed to amplify dangerous hate posts, a damning study has found. Analysis by Amnesty International suggests the social network's algorithm prioritises comments that are most likely to contain misinformation and hatred. This led to an enormous spread of vile lies following the Southport attacks last July, researchers found - and they warned nothing has changed. Within 24 hours posts wrongly claiming the killer was a Muslim or had come to the UK by small boat had been seen a staggering 27million times, the study says. And the attack was seized on by far-right agitator Tommy Robinson and notorious influencer Andrew Tate, who had previously been banned for hate speech, with their posts reaching millions of people. UK-France small boats returns deal - all you need to know as new details released Hundreds of people were arrested as violence broke out following the murder of three schoolgirls by British-born Axel Rudakubana, who was 17 at the time. The report said X, formerly known as Twitter, "dismantled or weakened" key safeguards after Musk took over in 2022. Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK's chief executive, said: 'By amplifying hate and misinformation on such a massive scale, X acted like petrol on the fire of racist violence in the aftermath of the Southport tragedy. "The platform's algorithm not only failed to 'break the circuit' and stop the spread of dangerous falsehoods; they are highly likely to have amplified them." The charity's study found X gives top priority to content that drives conversation - regardless of whether this is driven by misinformation or hatred. And it said posts from users who pay a premium are even more visible - further ramping up the risk of "toxic, racist, and false" content. Pat de Brún, Amnesty's head of big tech accountability, said: 'X's algorithm favours what would provoke a response and delivers it at scale. Divisive content that drives replies, irrespective of their accuracy or harm, may be prioritised and surface more quickly in timelines than verified information.' The report states: "In the critical window after the Southport attack, X's engagement-driven system meant that inflammatory posts, even if entirely false, went viral, outpacing efforts to correct the record or de-amplify harmful content - some of which amounted to advocacy of hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination or violence." It said this "contributed to heightened risks amid a wave of anti-Muslim and anti-migrant violence" which was seen across the UK. And it warns the platform "continues to present a serious human rights risk today". Amnesty's report points to an infamous post by Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for 31 months for stirring up racial hatred. It said X's failure to remove it was "telling" - saying it was seen 310,000 times, despite her account having less than 9,000 followers at the time.
