Why did Ukrainians take to the streets on 22 July 2025?
A retrospective on the law that placed two anti-corruption bodies under the Prosecutor General and the nationwide protests that followed.
What turned a day of legislative routine into the largest street protest Ukraine had seen since the full-scale invasion? On 22 July 2025, the answer was a law that put the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) under the control of the Prosecutor General.
What happened
As reported at the time, parliament adopted the law, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed it despite calls to veto it. Protests broke out across the country. They were described as the largest anti-government demonstrations since the Russian invasion of 2022.
Why it mattered
The protests were aimed at the subordination of two bodies that investigate and prosecute corruption. Placing NABU and SAP under the Prosecutor General meant general oversight of both institutions by a single official, and that was the change protesters objected to. The signing, despite the calls for a veto, set the government at odds with the demonstrators from the first day.
Later accounts described the demonstrations as running from 22 to 31 July 2025. They said people gathered in Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Dnipro and other cities, and that the bill was seen by its critics as aiming to effectively destroy the power of the two bodies. The movement later became known as the Cardboard protests, or Cardboard Maidan, because participants used handmade posters.
Implications
The episode showed that public attention to the independence of anti-corruption institutions remained strong in wartime. It also showed that citizens were willing to demonstrate openly against a decision by the president and parliament, even under the conditions of the invasion. How the dispute would be resolved lay beyond 22 July 2025; the day itself was defined by the signing and the immediate public reaction.
