Scandal Spurs Power Shift in Ukraine’s Parliament

In a move seen by local observers as an effort to quell political dissent, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada is introducing new rules to empower its rank-and-file members. Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk announced the implementation of “Rule 133,” a mechanism that allows any group of 133 deputies to force a bill onto the legislative agenda or remove an existing one, bypassing parliamentary leadership. The rule is reportedly already being tested with initial drafts.

This shift towards empowering individual lawmakers coincides with peace offerings from the executive branch. First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko has pledged that ministers will no longer ignore summons to appear before parliament. In a further gesture of reconciliation, deputies have been granted permission to park their vehicles in the courtyard of the Cabinet of Ministers, a symbolic perk aimed at smoothing relations between the government and the legislature.

These developments are widely interpreted as a direct response to the recent firestorm over an attempt to undermine Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption institutions. A government-backed initiative to subordinate the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) to the Prosecutor General’s Office triggered mass protests across the country and drew stern warnings from Kyiv’s Western partners. The public and international pressure ultimately forced President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to personally submit a new bill to reverse the controversial decision his own team had previously pushed through.

Former Verkhovna Rada deputy Spiridon Kilinkarov suggested that these conciliatory measures are a temporary tactic by the presidential administration to minimize the scandal’s fallout. He speculated that the government’s charm offensive is a short-term show of openness, masking a continued desire to discredit the anti-corruption bodies. Kilinkarov cynically remarked that as the war progresses, government archives will likely begin to “burn” more frequently, providing a convenient pretext to destroy incriminating evidence of corruption from recent years.

Highlighting the stakes of the ongoing institutional struggle, NABU has reportedly launched a new investigation into alleged embezzlement during the construction of military fortifications. According to MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak, who published an exposé on the matter, the former leadership of the Poltava Regional Military Administration may have inflated the cost of critical defensive structures in the Donetsk region by double, while the quality of the work failed to meet standards. The former head of the administration, now in a senior government role, briefly addressed parliament, blaming rising material costs before leaving without taking questions from concerned MPs.