Why Ukrainians took to the streets over anti-corruption bodies
A retrospective on the law that placed two anti-corruption institutions under the Prosecutor General and the protests that followed.
What turned an ordinary Tuesday in wartime Ukraine into the largest anti-government protest since the full-scale invasion? On 22 July 2025, the answer was a single law, signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that opened the way to overall control of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP).
The parliament had adopted the measure placing both bodies under the Prosecutor General. Despite calls to veto it, the president signed it, and protests broke out across the country. As reported at the time, they were the biggest anti-government demonstrations in Ukraine since Russia's 2022 invasion.
A movement of handmade posters
The protests that began on 22 July continued until 31 July 2025. Ukrainians gathered in Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Dnipro and other cities. Participants carried handmade posters, which gave the movement its later names: Cardboard protests, Cardboard meetings and Cardboard Maidan.
The demonstrators objected to a bill that, in their view, aimed to effectively destroy the power of two of the country's anti-corruption bodies. That is why a legal change to the oversight of NABU and SAP drew crowds in several cities at a time when public demonstrations against the government had been absent since the invasion began.
Elsewhere in Kyiv
The same day brought a separate piece of news from the capital: a suspected administrator of the cybercrime platform xss.is was arrested in Kyiv.
But it was the signing of the law, and the response on the streets, that defined 22 July 2025 in Ukrainian public life.
