Ukrainians and Their Allies Defend the Rule of Law

Ukrainian rule of law was tested this week, and although the parliamentary process bears close watching over the next week, Ukraine may well be on track to survive the test. If the international community learns from this experience to push back swiftly against reform backsliding, Ukraine and backers of freedom everywhere will emerge stronger.

The Ukrainian government’s attempt to gut the independence of anti-corruption agencies NABU and SAPO through a new law triggered a vast immune response. Civic and governmental defenders of Ukrainian anti-corruption efforts dialed advocacy up to full throttle—an intensity unseen since well before the full-scale invasion.

Ukrainian civil society, media, lawmakers, anti-corruption agencies, and others called for the law to be rescinded. Ukrainian organizing that started 11 days earlier in response to the political repression of anti-corruption activist Vitaliy Shabunin provided a handy launchpad. The international contribution to this week’s civil society organizing involved shaping global news coverage, calling an emergency meeting of the Ukraine Reform Working Group, briefing governments, and writing op-eds urging European governments to take the lead on pushback—because the US government cannot currently be counted upon to play its traditional leadership role in pressing for strong reforms.

Within hours, Europe delivered. What started as private diplomacy on Tuesday escalated into public criticism on Wednesday, which most European leaders have avoided during the war. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer each called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to warn that he was jeopardizing Ukraine’s European trajectory. Zelenskyy promised to fix the situation with a new law, inviting allies to consult in the drafting process. The need to do this was reinforced by public messages from the foreign ministers of Germany, Denmark, Czechia, the Netherlands, Romania, and Lithuania, as well as the EU Commissioner for Enlargement and a bipartisan pair of US senators.

Zelenskyy wisely also included Ukrainian civil society and the anti-corruption agencies in the process of developing the new draft law. NABU and SAPO support the bill. Transparency International Ukraine praises it as “an almost complete return to the legal framework that existed prior to [Tuesday, even though it] contains certain nuances that may have a negative effect”. Those nuances include six months of security-service checks (and continued polygraph testing) of NABU and SAPO employees, a ban against NABU employees traveling abroad during martial law (which does not apply to other agencies), and authority for the prosecutor general and regional offices to appoint prosecutors without competitive selection (a provision that ought to be reformed through a separate legislative initiative). The Anti-Corruption Action Center says the draft law “effectively repeals all problematic provisions from Tuesday’s legislation that threatened NABU and SAPO independence”, referring to the undesirable nuances as “largely cosmetic” and “face-saving” measures that Zelenskyy needs politically. Ukraine’s most reputable reformist parliamentarians registered an even better draft law, which does not contain the potentially harmful provisions.

The reason why parliament is not scheduled to vote on Zelenskyy’s draft law until next Thursday, July 31, is tactical politics. MPs who voted for the Tuesday law need time to distance themselves from their mistake. Although some have already publicly promised to make it right, others remain frustrated with the Office of the President for the whiplash of voting for and then against something controversial. There is a danger that they will want to water down the bill. The most urgent next step now is for parliament to pass an unchanged version of this draft law in the first reading, avoiding the danger of poison-pill amendments in any second reading.

The most important lesson to be learned by Ukraine’s allies is that an essential plank of their allyship is forceful—and sometimes sharply and publicly critical—pushback against reform backsliding in Kyiv. An important precursor to this week’s crisis was the Ukrainian government’s unlawful refusal to appoint the head of the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine, a standoff that remains unresolved and international partners are failing to strongly address. In the future, the international community cannot repeat the mistake of tolerating moderate backsliding, which opens the door to severe backsliding. This week’s resiliency proves that lesson to be valid even—perhaps especially—during a total war in which Ukrainians are sacrificing for their right to freely continue building their reformed democracy and rule of law, as they have been doing since 2014.

The Ukrainian people took on this lesson themselves this week. The most inspirational part of this saga has been the enthusiasm with which thousands of young Ukrainians took to the streets without hesitation for the first time in their lives. These intelligent and passionate citizens are organizing rallies organically. The largest rally they are currently planning will occur next Wednesday, July 30, on the eve of the parliamentary vote. The more established professional CSOs with decades of experience are not the current protest organizers, although they are impressed by the spontaneous energy they see in this new generation.

The Ukrainian security services may try to discredit these organic protests through classic autocratic tactics such as falsely claiming that the organizers are paid Western puppets or by covertly interjecting violent provocateurs. Like all efforts to subvert Ukrainian freedom—whether they emanate from Moscow, old-guard elements in Kyiv, or anywhere else—this is destined to fail. From the Euromaidan in 2013 to the front lines of the full-scale war since 2022, Ukrainians have powerfully proven that nobody will take away their democracy and rule of law for the lifetime to come. There is no more worthy cause for the free world to stand behind, including by pushing back forcefully against reform backsliding.