What did the July 2025 anti-corruption law change for Ukraine?

What was at stake when protests spread across Ukraine, and why did a single law draw so many people into the streets? On 24 July 2025, the country was two days into demonstrations that began on 22 July, after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed 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

Parliament had adopted the measure, and calls to veto it went unheeded: Zelenskyy signed it on 22 July. As reported at the time, the law allowed general control over NABU and SAP. That is the core of the dispute. Two bodies built to investigate and prosecute corruption were now subordinate to the Prosecutor General.

The response

Protests broke out nationwide and were described at the time as the largest anti-government demonstration in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion. Later accounts say people gathered in Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Dnipro and other cities, and that the movement became known as the Cardboard protests because participants carried handmade posters. Those accounts also describe the bill as one that aimed to effectively destroy the power of the two bodies.

What the day showed

The episode is notable for how it unfolded. A decision taken in the legislature and confirmed by the president met public resistance within hours, in wartime conditions that had kept street politics largely quiet. The demonstrations were directed at the government's handling of institutions designed to hold officials to account.

The question for 24 July 2025 was therefore not only legal but political: whether the authorities would hold to a law they had just enacted, as crowds in many cities demanded otherwise. The scale of the protests made the matter impossible to treat as a narrow dispute over prosecutorial procedure.