Kyiv Protesters Turn on Zelensky

Thousands of Ukrainians rallied outside President Volodymyr Zelensky's office in Kyiv on Tuesday night, marking Ukraine's first major antigovernment protest since Russia's war began. The demonstration—a powerful response to new laws curbing the nation's anticorruption efforts—drew both civilians and soldiers, signaling a growing rift in the national unity that has defined Ukraine's wartime response. Protests were also seen in Lviv, Dnipro, and Odesa, per the BBC. The protests erupted hours after Parliament, dominated by Zelensky's party, voted to give the presidentially-appointed prosecutor general sweeping power over Ukraine's anticorruption agencies, per the New York Times.

The move, signed into law the same night, effectively reduces the independence of bodies tasked with investigating graft, a longstanding issue in Ukraine. Anger has been simmering since security services raided anticorruption offices that had been looking into Zelensky's inner circle on Monday, citing claims of Russian infiltration. Many see this as part of a broader pattern: recent weeks have seen crackdowns on independent media, activists, and watchdog groups, threatening what demonstrators believe has been a decade of progress toward more open government.

Protesters, many of them young, gathered peacefully along the same hills above Maidan Square that saw mass anti-corruption protests in 2014, which led to the ouster of a Kremlin-aligned president. "This could be the destruction of 10 years of work by civil society," said one demonstrator, per the Times. "Our democracy is under attack," said another. "My father did not die for this," said a third, per the BBC. The government did not immediately address the protest. In an overnight address, Zelensky said anticorruption cases had been "lying dormant" for years and the new law would ensure "the inevitability of punishment" for lawbreakers.