Zelenskyy responds to growing anti-corruption protests in Ukraine
Ukrainian media estimated that thousands of people gathered near the presidential office in the capital Kyiv on Wednesday evening, despite a nightly curfew and the ever-present threat of Russian drone and missile strikes.
Those gathered were protesting a controversial law approved by parliament and signed by Zelenskyy on Tuesday. The bill will bring the Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and its partner organization, the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), under the direct control of the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO).
The prosecutor general is appointed by the president, prompting concern among critics that the law will give the president's office undue influence over NABU and SAPO.
The president sought to ease tensions on Wednesday, promising to put forward a new bill to ensure the independence of the anti-corruption bodies.
Zelenskyy said in a post to Telegram that he met with the heads of all law enforcement and anti-corruption agencies.
"We agreed that the heads of these institutions will jointly propose an action plan -- a plan of concrete steps that can strengthen the rule of law in Ukraine," he wrote. "Of course, everyone has heard what people are saying these days -- what they are saying on social media, to each other, on the streets. It's not falling on deaf ears."
"We've analyzed all the concerns, all the aspects of what needs to be changed and what needs to be stepped up," he added.
"And what will remain most important is not losing our national unity, ending the war, stopping this Russian evil and securing a dignified peace for Ukraine," Zelenskyy wrote. "And exactly as we all envision it -- as a full-fledged part of Europe. We'll make it happen."
On Thursday, Zelenskyy said had approved the text of the new bill which would be sent to parliament. "The most important thing is real tools, no Russian ties and the independence of NABU and [SAPO]," the president wrote.
Both NABU and SAPO were set up in the aftermath of Ukraine's pro-Western Maidan Revolution in 2014, with the intention of rooting out systemic corruption and helping Kyiv reform its democratic system with an eye on EU accession.
MORE: Zelenskyy faces major anti-corruption protests as Ukraine prepares for Russia talks
Critics of the new legislation say it constitutes a power grab by Zelenskyy and his presidential office -- which is headed by influential chief of staff Andriy Yermak -- that undermines Ukrainian democracy and threatens the country's EU ambitions.
Zelenskyy and his supporters have defended the measures as necessary to root out Russian influence in NABU and SAPO.
The passing of the law followed a series of raids on NABU employees by officers from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the PGO on Monday. Officers also began inspecting the handling of state secrets at SAPO.
"The anti-corruption infrastructure will work," Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram late on Tuesday. "Only without Russian influences -- everything needs to be cleansed of this. And there should be more justice."
The domestic political crisis erupted as a Ukrainian delegation headed to Istanbul, Turkey, for the latest round of ceasefire talks with Russian negotiators. Wednesday's meeting there ended after less than an hour.
Vladimir Medinsky, who led the Russian delegation, told reporters after the talks that the two sides agreed on a new prisoner exchange of at least 1,200 people.
The two sides also discussed the memoranda exchanged during the last round of talks on June 2, Medinsky said, adding that the delegations were "quite far from each other." The parties agreed to continue negotiations, Medinsky said.
When asked about a potential meeting between Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Medinsky said any potential meeting should be carefully prepared.
Cross-border drone strikes continued despite the new talks. Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces downed 42 Ukrainian drones overnight into Thursday morning.
Russian drones and missiles, meanwhile, targeted Odesa, Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Sumy and Mykolaiv regions, Zelenskyy said in a post to Telegram.
Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 103 strike drones and four missiles into the country overnight into Thursday morning. Ninety drones and one missile were shot down or suppressed, the air force said, with impacts by 13 drones and three missiles across 11 locations. Falling debris from interceptions was reported in six places.
MORE: Scale of Russia-Ukraine drone strikes builds ahead of possible ceasefire talks
"Russia does not stop its terror, blocks diplomacy and that is why it deserves full-scale sanctions responses and our strikes on its logistics, military bases and military production facilities," the president wrote.
"We will do everything to make diplomacy work," he added. "But it is Russia that must end this war that it started itself."
ABC News' Ellie Kaufman, Will Gretsky, Tanya Stukalova, Fidel Pavlenko and Julia Drozd contributed to this report.
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And so Palace are taking their case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), asking the so-called 'supreme court' of worldwide athletic endeavour to overturn UEFA's decision. Palace have also named Nottingham Forest and Lyon in their appeal, as their fellow Premier League side have been elevated from the Conference League to the second-tier Europa League at their expense, while their disputed stablemates from Ligue 1 have been left in the Europa League, as their higher domestic league finish of the two sides trumps winning the FA Cup. Steve Parish, Palace's chairman, will not mind which of those clubs CAS demotes, as long as what he views as the 'terrible injustice' of his team being removed from the Europa League is reversed. He believes he must take this fight on for Palace's players, staff and fans, as well as others who might find themselves in this position one day. 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Palace's starting point is likely to be that Textor, whose Eagle Football Group still contains his controlling stakes at Brazilian side Botafogo, Belgian's RWDM Brussels (rebranded from Molenbeek earlier this year) and Lyon, did not have what UEFA calls 'decisive influence' at Selhurst Park, and that they have never been part of his multi-club group. Advertisement This, you would think, is supported by the fact he has just sold his 43 per cent stake in Palace to Woody Johnson, the billionaire owner of the NFL's New York Jets and former U.S. ambassador to the UK. Furthermore, that 43 per cent stake only gave Textor one of four voting shares at Palace, with Parish and two other American investors, David Blitzer and Josh Harris, also holding one each. As Textor has previously explained to The Athletic, decisions at Palace very rarely, if ever, went to a vote, as Blitzer and Harris are silent partners who trust Parish to run things. So, Parish would always have 75 per cent of the votes, and he had no interest in Textor's plan to integrate the Londoners into the Eagle multi-club universe. Blitzer, Harris, Parish and Textor all went to UEFA's headquarters in the Swiss city of Nyon last month to make this point but the Club Financial Control Body (CFCB), the arms-length unit that decides which teams can and cannot be licensed to play in the three European competitions, wasn't buying it. Instead, it ruled that Textor's influence was decisive at Palace because he has injected more than £100million ($134m at the current rate) into the club since 2022, money that helped them finish their new-look academy facilities and sign players, and was the largest single shareholder which meant he must, at the very least, have had a say in what they could and could not do. A decisive say? Well, that is why CAS exists. Dr Antoine Duval is the head of Asser International Sports Law Centre in the Netherlands and a seasoned watcher of CAS's decision-making. He believes it's possible the CAS panel will disagree with the CFCB assessment but says the 'quality of the evidence provided by Palace about its internal management structure and the role, or lack of it, of Textor/Eagle will be crucial'. Textor's voting rights will be a key consideration for CAS, but so will his financial contributions and influence on recruitment and commercial strategy. For example, he was a strong advocate of appointing Oliver Glasner, the Austrian head coach who led Palace to their FA Cup triumph, in February last year, although he recently insisted on UK radio station Talksport that the notion he 'made the hire (at Palace) happen… that's not true at all. I tried to get him at Lyon — if he spoke French, he'd be there. I told UEFA that a suggestion is not decisive influence. Nobody tells Steve (Parish) what to do, he's as stubborn as anybody.' Palace, no doubt, will say the only player to be transferred between them and Lyon was centre-back Jake O'Brien in 2023: beyond some young players going on loan to Molenbeek (including O'Brien, earlier in his career), they had no other transactions with an Eagle Football Group club, despite Textor's frequent suggestions. Advertisement But Dr Gregory Ioannidis, an experienced campaigner at CAS and an associate professor at Sheffield Hallam University, is not sure this will be enough to sway the panel. He believes Palace will try to argue that a 'more flexible and purposeful interpretation of the regulations' should be applied, with the club's lawyers asking the panel to think about what UEFA is trying to achieve with its MCO rules, fair competition, and whether the English side pose any threat to that legitimate aim. 'But if the panel decides the rules are clear, and therefore a strict and literal approach needs to be applied, the chances for a successful appeal will be minimised,' explains Ioannidis. While each case is considered on its own merits, precedents can be helpful, and two CAS panels have recently made very quick decisions on MCO cases involving Slovakian team FC DAC 1904 and Drogheda United from the Republic of Ireland. Both were blocked from playing in the Conference League by the CFCB and then lost their appeals, DAC unanimously and Drogheda on a majority verdict. The two cases were different but both argued they simply did not have enough time to create the separation UEFA requires between them and their MCO sister clubs. As MCO groups have proliferated across Europe, UEFA has given owners two options: reduce your stake in one of the clubs that want to compete in the same competition to less than 30 per cent, step down as a director and halt whatever player-trading strategy you are pursuing with the two teams, or put one of into a blind trust, so you have no influence over day-to-day operations. Crucially, UEFA moved the deadline for doing one or the other of these workarounds from early June to March 1. DAC, Drogheda and Palace all missed this memo. However, in both the DAC and Drogheda cases, the CAS panels backed UEFA. Advertisement 'What is of immense importance here is the panels' findings that the current regulations do not require evidence of actual influence, but rather only the possibility of such influence,' says Ioannidis. 'This, in conjunction with the finding on the procedural aspect of submitting the changes in the club's ownership structure on time (or not), may cause serious difficulties for those arguing Palace's case.' Parish has explained in recent interviews that Palace were too busy playing Championship neighbours Millwall in the last 16 of the FA Cup on March 1 to be thinking about what might happen if they were to win the whole thing and play in Europe for the first time in their history, but Duval says the deadline argument is doomed. 'It seems to me that a possible argument about the new deadline has already been rejected, thus the main focus will probably be on whether Textor had decisive influence,' he says. And while Palace will come armed with evidence that shows Textor was routinely ignored, UEFA's lawyers will no doubt point to the letter CFCB chair Sunil Gulati sent to the club licensing managers at UEFA's 55 member associations last May which spells out what 'decisive influence' means. A literal reading of that document — the 30 per cent shareholding threshold, significant financial support, being a director, the ability to influence recruitment decisions and so on — would suggest Palace's legal team are going to have their work cut out. Given all that, it might make sense for Palace to make a more general argument that a strict application of the rules in this case simply make no sense, as there is obviously no threat to the integrity of the competition, which is the entire point of article 5.01 in UEFA's rulebook, the regulation that deals with MCO clubs. And there is some encouragement here, in that the concepts of fairness, integrity and sporting justice are all enshrined in Swiss law. But there are risks attached to this approach, too. 'Swiss law does protect such principles and both CAS and the Swiss Federal Tribunal (where any appeals over a CAS verdict are heard but rarely upheld) have ruled accordingly,' says Ioannidis. 'However, I wouldn't run this argument, because the panel may take the view that it is precisely for these principles that UEFA's decision may be upheld, as the other clubs in the competition acted promptly and ensured they followed the rules and deadlines.' Advertisement That said, the Drogheda case shows that one of the panel disagreed with his colleagues. The written judgment has not been published, so we do not know why they disagreed but it is possible the Irish club's plea for a more common-sense-based assessment of the rules was persuasive. Palace may think that if they can do the same, they are halfway there. 'Not everything is negative for Palace,' says Ioannidis. 'I would argue that the intention of the regulator is to ensure fair competition. As such, the fact that Palace may have realised their mistake and acted in compliance with the rules, albeit late, shows a genuine and honest approach to the legitimate aim pursued by UEFA. 'In this instance, it would be fair, just and reasonable for UEFA to allow Palace to be admitted to the Europa League.' Another possible line of attack for Palace is the apparent inconsistencies in the application of UEFA's rules — and this is where the decision to make Forest a party in this appeal is intriguing. The argument, presumably, would be that Evangelos Marinakis, owner of both Forest and Greece's Olympiacos, did not place the former in a blind trust until the end of April, a move he reversed when they eventually failed to join their cousins from Athens in next season's Champions League. It is a moot point now but Marinakis seemed to miss the UEFA deadline, too, and, if literal readings are important, you either meet it or you don't. If Palace wanted to be really mischievous, they could ask what Marinakis was doing on the pitch at the end of Forest's home draw against Leicester City on May 11. While he may well have been checking on the health of an injured Forest player, the episode suggested the Greek billionaire still exerted some influence at the City Ground despite that blind-trust move. And, just to add some further spice to the pot, Parish has suggested that Forest played a part in Palace's demotion to the Conference League. But an argument that effectively depends on the panel accepting that it is OK for a club to be confused about the regulations is unlikely to pan out. 'The rules and deadlines have always been there, and Palace had to act promptly, irrespective of what other clubs did,' says Ioannidis. 'The panel might say that a professional club, with an army of expert lawyers, ought to be more diligent and proactive. If confused, they could have asked UEFA for clarification.' And with that sensible advice, we should probably wrap this up and wait for CAS to make sense of it all. Hopefully.
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