Why Ukrainians protested in the middle of a war

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Why Ukrainians protested in the middle of a war


Thousands of people took to the streets this past week to protest the Ukrainian government’s efforts to hamstring two anticorruption agencies. President Volodymyr Zelensky was forced to back down and restore their independence. The protesters, for now, have won.


This public display of discontent broke a taboo against criticizing the government and undermining wartime unity that has held since Russia invaded. But as I learned from speaking to my colleague Marc Santora, for these protesters, the fight to preserve Ukraine’s democratic institutions can’t wait for peace. Because those institutions are at the heart of why Ukraine is battling Russia in the first place.

Ukraine is fighting two wars, one against Russia and one against corruption. But in some ways, they’re the same war: a war for democracy.

Some of the anger stems from the feeling that Zelensky committed a betrayal. He won in 2019 on an anticorruption campaign. Then, last week, he signed a bill that would have brought the two independent agencies fighting graft under government control, just as they were investigating lawmakers from his party and members of his own cabinet. (Zelensky himself is not under investigation.)

But some of the anger stems from the potency of corruption as a political issue. For Ukrainians, it’s loaded with implications about the country’s history and its future.

One reason the recent protests feel so momentous is that they echo the 2014 demonstrations that took place in the same location — Maidan Square. Those protests were in part about Ukraine’s relationship with Russia, and anger at the then-president, Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally who had made clear he wasn’t going to let the country move closer to Western Europe.

But they were also about corruption. Yanukovych’s own ill-gotten wealth was emblematic of Ukraine’s reputation as a kleptocracy. And as the country known as the most corrupt in Europe, Ukraine would never be allowed to join the European Union, regardless of who was in charge.

The 2014 Maidan protests led not only to Yanukovych’s ouster, but also to Russia’s occupation of Crimea later that year, and ultimately, many have argued, to the full-scale invasion in 2022. In other words, the fight for good governance is part of what led Ukraine to where it is today.


‘Ukraine is not like Russia’

When I read about last week’s protests, I thought about Sevgil Musaieva, the editor in chief of the prominent news site Ukrainska Pravda. I met her in November. But even then, Musaieva talked to me about Ukraine’s lingering “Soviet instincts.”

As a journalist, she has felt those firsthand. Musaieva, who has been investigating corruption since Yanukovych’s time, lost her first job when one of the former president’s wealthy supporters bought the news outlet where she worked. When Zelensky took power, she was hopeful. Then Russia invaded, and the country rallied. But the problem of corruption remained.

That presented a dilemma for Musaieva. Nine months into the war, Musaieva and her colleagues held an editorial meeting to debate whether to publish an article on wartime profiteering by the head of one of Ukraine’s frontline regions. Publishing felt like an act of betrayal at a time when their country needed to court Western donors in the face of Russian aggression. But as journalists, she said, they felt compelled to report the truth. Ukrainska Pravda means Ukrainian truth; it is no coincidence that the site is banned in Russia.

The consequences were swift. According to Musaieva, the Zelensky government has barred politicians from speaking to her journalists and told advertisers to go elsewhere. My colleagues at The Times have written about the increasing restrictions and pressures on the media in Ukraine.

The war will have been for nothing, Musaieva said, if Ukraine looks like Russia in the end. “The whole point is Ukraine is not like Russia,” she told me.

The protesters who turned out in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities this past week were experiencing a version of Musaieva’s dilemma. They knew that the eyes of the West were on them. They, like her, decided that the best way to defend Ukraine was to defend Ukrainian democracy.


NYT, 28-07-2025 (Katrin Bennhold)