Did Ukraine's anti-corruption protests reach a turning point by 25 July 2025?
A look back at the situation on 25 July 2025, three days after a law placing NABU and SAP under the Prosecutor General triggered nationwide demonstrations.
Was Ukraine at a political turning point on 25 July 2025? The question was hard to avoid. Three days earlier, on 22 July 2025, protests had broken out across the country after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a law allowing general control over the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP).
What the law did
The parliament had adopted the measure placing both bodies under the Prosecutor General. Despite calls to veto it, Zelenskyy signed it the same day, 22 July. As reported at the time, the demonstrations that followed were the largest anti-government protests in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022.
The street response
People gathered in Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Dnipro and other cities. Participants used handmade posters, and the demonstrations became known as the Cardboard protests, or Cardboard Maidan. The protesters objected to a bill that, in their view, aimed to effectively destroy the power of the two anti-corruption bodies. The protests continued from 22 to 31 July 2025.
A country still at war
The unrest unfolded against the background of the war. On 21 July 2025, the United States and Germany had agreed to send five Patriot missile defence systems to Ukraine. The same period also brought a law-enforcement item from Kyiv: on 22 July, a suspected administrator of the cybercrime platform xss.is was arrested in the capital.
By 25 July, then, the picture was one of a government facing public pressure over the independence of its anti-corruption institutions, while military support from partners was still being arranged. How the dispute over NABU and SAP would be resolved was not yet settled on that day.
