Ukrainian government raids anti-corruption campaigner, raising alarm

Ukranian activists warn about corruption and authoritarianism after police raids against several high-profile anti-corruption campaigners and opposition figures.

Ukraine risks backsliding on its endemic corruption problem — and even creeping toward authoritarianism — activists warn, following police raids against a high-profile anti-corruption campaigner and opposition figures.

On July 11, armed police raided the home of Vitaliy Shabunin, the co-founder of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center. He has accused President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of “taking the first, but confident steps toward corrupt authoritarianism,” including backing laws offering amnesty to those accused of corruption in the defense industry, and passing over an independently selected candidate for a key anti-graft role.

The move has perturbed even some of Zelenskyy’s supporters — people who are simultaneously worried about the heavy-handed and potentially spurious crackdown on dissent, and that such criticisms against the Ukrainian leader might be used in bad faith by opponents in Moscow or Washington.

“This is the red line which President Zelensky has crossed — and the red line is in a very wrong direction in terms of the development of Ukraine,” said Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, the Kyiv-based watchdog that Shabunin co-founded. She said the State Bureau of Investigations did not have the necessary court documents for the search.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Vadym Sarakhan / APShabunin has been charged with evading military service and fraud, with prosecutors alleging that while on secondment from the front lines to continue his activism back in Kyiv, he conducted activities unrelated to his military service. His defense team and supporters say the secondment was all aboveboard and ordered by his superiors, and that the allegations are trumped up and political.