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What Ukraine's June 2019 legal moves changed
Summary
A look back at two Ukrainian legal developments of early June 2019, on impeachment procedure and anti-corruption powers.
What was Kyiv's legal landscape like on 11 June 2019? In the days before that date, two decisions had reshaped parts of it.
On 6 June 2019, the Verkhovna Rada passed the law on temporary investigative commissions and temporary special commissions of the Verkhovna Rada. The law regulates the procedure for impeaching the President of Ukraine, so it set out how such a process would be handled in parliament.
On the same day, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine ruled certain legal provisions unconstitutional. One concerned the e-declaration requirements applied to civic activists. The other, brought to the court by a plant owned by Kolomoisky, concerned the right of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) to demand that corrupt deals be declared invalid. The court found the provisions on that right unconstitutional.
Why the two decisions mattered together
One development concerned the rules for removing a president. The other narrowed tools tied to anti-corruption work: the declaration rules for activists and NABU's ability to challenge deals in court. Both turned on how legal powers were distributed and limited.
A regional note
On 7 June 2019, the United States notified Turkey that it would cancel Turkey's purchase of F-35 fighter jets if Ankara went ahead with buying Russia's S-400 missile defence system. That was a separate matter, but it was part of the regional news of the same week.
