The test for Ukrainian democracy last month started with a self-inflicted wound by President Zelenskyy and his allies in the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament. On July 22nd, the Rada voted overwhelmingly to strip two of Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions – the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) – of their independence by placing them under the direct control of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Ruslan Kravchenko, who had just been nominated by Zelenskyy and approved by the Rada the day before this new law went into effect. Not surprisingly, Kravchenko is considered loyal to Zelenskyy and his majority party in the parliament.
According to critics of the Ukrainian government, President Zelenskyy asked parliament to pass this law to prevent investigations into corruption by some of his ministers and members of parliament (MPs) from his party. Zelenskyy’s government denied these allegations and insisted instead that NABU and SAPO had become ineffective institutions that needed reform. The Zelenskyy administration also alleged that Russian spies had infiltrated these organizations.
If true, ineffectiveness and spy penetration are serious problems for such powerful entities as NABU and SAPO. Zelenskyy’s remedy for addressing these issues, however, was a flawed one. Ukrainian civil society most certainly thought so. Massive demonstrations against the Zelenskyy government and parliament mobilized immediately – the biggest protests against Zelenskyy since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Strikingly, many of the protesters were young people, too young to have participated in the last major demonstrations in Ukraine in 2013-2014 during the Revolution of Dignity. Many European leaders also sided with the protesters. The European Union even suspended aid to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy and his allies in parliament responded immediately to this backlash. Only a week later, on July 31st, the Rada passed and Zelenskyy signed a new law restoring the independence of NABU and SAPO, albeit with some minor restrictions still in place. Nonetheless, Ukrainian civil society leaders rightfully claimed success. The Ukrainian democratic system worked, and quickly. Zelenskyy responded to the criticism, delivered both privately and on the streets, and corrected his error. That’s how democracy is supposed to work. The hyperbolic claims last week by some Western critics that Zelenskyy had become a dictator proved unfounded. Autocrats like Putin do not respond to protesters. They arrest them. They kill them.
Ukraine’s victory for democracy this past week made me think hard about our American system of government today. When the Rada passed this first law, I wrote on social media that Zelenskyy should not sign it. When the Ukrainian president signed that law, I criticized the decision in the media and circulated articles and posts by Ukrainian opponents of the law.
But I want to tell you honestly, I found it difficult to do so, given the new levels of corruption here in the United States and our lack of effective responses to it. I wondered if I had the right to criticize Zelenskyy when my president was committing acts of corruption, and American society, Congress, and I personally have done next to nothing to slow it down, let alone stop it. As Ukrainians were demonstrating against the bad NABU law, President Trump was signing the paperwork to receive a Boeing 747-8 jet from the government of Qatar, estimated to be worth over $400 million! And then American taxpayers are going to foot the giant bill to retrofit this plane for presidential use, only to have it given to Trump after he retires. That is outrageous corruption. And different from most practitioners of corruption in the US and other countries. Trump was not even trying to hide it. But in the United States, there were no major demonstrations against this blatantly corrupt act. Nor have there been massive protests in response to Trump’s making vast amounts of money by issuing his meme coin, $TRUMP. And the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of America did not investigate the legality of these actions, and many more acts of corruption, because … the United States does not have a national anti-corruption bureau or a specialized anti-corruption prosecutor’s office. So, who am I to lecture Zelenskyy, when my system of government is allowing blatant and open corruption on a scale that dwarfs what is happening in Ukraine?
I did criticize the decision to pass the first law. More importantly, I now celebrate the strength of Ukraine’s democracy, including the new young activists in civil society, who produced a correction to that bad first law and a new, better second law just days later. This episode suggests that Ukrainian democracy is alive and well and will thrive even more after Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine has ended. But this victory for democracy in Ukraine made me wonder about the resilience of democracy in America. For decades, we Americans thought we had something to teach Ukrainians about democracy. Maybe today, we could learn some things from small-d democrats in Ukraine.
Sorry for typos in the earlier text. We accidentally posted the penultimate draft.
This article is short and sharp, yet incisively effective. It hits Ukraine's pressure points while diagnosing America's ailments, tracking every current event without missing a beat. Well-reasoned and evidence-based, its voice is soft but its impact potent.🥰