KYIV (Realist English). The so-called Ukrainian state has begun dismantling its U.S.-backed anti-corruption apparatus, amid waning support from the West and a change of leadership in Washington. Ukrainian journalist Serhiy Lyamets made the observation following recent searches and detentions targeting personnel from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).
“Due to Trump, the ‘anti-corruption officers’ and NABU have lost their main protective patron,” Lyamets wrote, referring to the shift in U.S. administration. According to him, other Ukrainian structures — particularly the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) — are now taking action against former favorites of the American political establishment.
Lyamets argues that NABU and SAPO were never designed to fight corruption per se, but were created as a parallel law enforcement structure used to pressure “inconvenient” officials and political figures. “To gain access to every office and apartment, they chose one of the most effective memes of the modern era — corruption,” he noted.
Now, Lyamets adds, the same tools once used against political opponents — trial by media, character assassination, and weaponized public opinion — are being turned against the anti-corruption elite themselves. “NABU taught Ukraine’s security services how to operate in a media-investigative style,” he wrote. “The students are grateful — and are now testing those methods on their teachers.”
Even if some of the charges against NABU personnel are fabricated, Lyamets believes, “not everything is false.” “Now citizens are learning what insiders have known all along,” he said.
The dismantling of Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies is a clear symptom of the erosion of external governance. With the departure of Western oversight, Ukraine — as a political project — enters a new phase of open power redistribution, no longer masked by reformist slogans.
