Not the Free Ukraine the World is Backing

On Friday, amid the closing ceremony of the biggest annual international conference on Ukraine—the Ukraine Recovery Conference, this year in Rome—Ukrainian civil society actors were staring at their phones in horror, illustrating a chilling effect that is often the aim of repression against civic activists.

On their phones were images of men wielding machine guns—but no court warrant—searching the home and military service station of leading Ukrainian anti-corruption activist Vitaliy Shabunin. During the ten-hour search, the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) confiscated not only Shabunin’s devices but also those of his wife and young children.

Although the Ukrainian government has been orchestrating pressure against Shabunin for more than two years—as Shabunin has been vocally critical of powerful officials in the Office of the President—Friday's investigative steps constituted an unprecedented escalation. The SBI charged Shabunin, who voluntarily joined the army in the early days of the full-scale invasion, with evading military service (because at one point he took an approved secondment to the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption) and using a gifted car. A day earlier, Shabunin's military commanders suddenly ordered him relocated toward the front lines, where the government could prevent his attorneys, colleagues, and journalists from being present at the time of the warrantless armed search and seizure. As of this writing, Shabunin has been “disappeared”—his colleagues, family, and lawyers do not know where he is or what condition he is in.

Ukraine's allies have been saying for three years that the country is bravely fighting for the free world—where democracies obey the rule of law and do not target activists for persecution. If they remain silent in this precarious moment, their words of support for Ukrainian freedom will prove shamefully hollow.