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Why Ukraine's anti-corruption law sparked protests
Summary
A retrospective on 22 July 2025, when a signed law placing two anti-corruption bodies under the Prosecutor General brought people onto the streets.
What turned a routine legislative step into the largest street protest in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion? On 22 July 2025, the answer lay in a law that placed the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) under the Prosecutor General.
The law and the signature
The Ukrainian parliament adopted the measure, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed it despite calls to veto it. As reported at the time, the law allowed general control over both bodies. Protests broke out across the country after the signing.
Why the streets filled
The scale set this episode apart. The demonstrations were described as the largest anti-government protest in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022. The reaction was aimed at the structure of oversight: two institutions dealing with corruption cases would answer to a single official, the Prosecutor General.
The choice of signing over vetoing carried its own weight. Calls for a veto had been made before the signature, so the protests followed a decision that the president had been urged not to take.
Later accounts said the demonstrations ran from 22 to 31 July 2025 and reached Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Dnipro and other cities. Participants used handmade posters, and the movement came to be known as the Cardboard protests, or Cardboard Maidan. Those labels came afterwards and were not how the day was described at the time.
A separate item from Kyiv
The same day brought an unrelated development in the capital: a suspected administrator of the cybercrime platform xss.is was arrested in Kyiv.
What the day showed
The events of 22 July 2025 placed the independence of anti-corruption institutions at the centre of Ukrainian politics. A law adopted by parliament and signed by the president drew a nationwide public response within the same day, in the middle of a war.
