After the vote, Zelenskyy instantly signed the brand new invoice into legislation.
Many present MPs are topics of NABU investigations. The company has charged 71 present and former MPs with corruption, 42 of them through the interval between 2022 and 2025. Thirty-one of the charged MPs nonetheless sit within the Ukrainian parliament.
Whereas lots of the lawmakers implicitly admitted they erred initially in scuttling the independence of NABU and SAP, some Ukrainian political heavyweights — reminiscent of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko — defended the controversial vote final week.
“This invoice, the president submitted below colossal strain, will not be about NABU and SAP, and never in regards to the struggle towards corruption. NABU and SAP are organs of political strain on Ukraine’s authorities from outdoors. We aren’t a rustic that may be dominated by overseas powers as a canine on a leash,” Tymoshenko mentioned through the parliament session on Thursday. “I don’t care who takes away our sovereignty, East or West.”
On the similar time, Tymoshenko mentioned she doesn’t imagine the EU will take away funding if Ukraine stops reforms, and mentioned that by voting to strip SAP of its independence, she was really preventing overseas governance of Ukraine, the identical narrative Russia pushes to justify its full-scale invasion.
Final week, Zelenskyy rapidly signed the disputed invoice, claiming each NABU and SAP — which have been investigating corruption allegations towards a few of his closest allies — weren’t efficient sufficient and have been crammed with Russian brokers.
