For the first time since Russia’s 2022 invasion, large-scale protests filled Kyiv’s streets this week. The immediate cause was President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to sign a new law which guts the independence of the country’s anti-corruption bodies, placing them under the oversight of his hand-picked appointee. This has not come out of the blue. Instead, it appears to be part of a larger effort to consolidate his own power, and follows a major bureaucratic shake-up which merged several ministries and shuffled his top advisors.
