The bill now goes back to Zelenskyy to be signed into law.
Many current MPs are subjects of NABU investigations. The agency has charged 71 current and former MPs with corruption, 42 of them during the period between 2022 and 2025. Thirty-one of the charged MPs still sit in the Ukrainian parliament.
While many of the lawmakers implicitly admitted they erred originally in scuttling the independence of NABU and SAP, some Ukrainian political heavyweights — such as former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko — defended the controversial vote last week.
“This bill, the president submitted under colossal pressure, is not about NABU and SAP, and not about the fight against corruption. NABU and SAP are organs of political pressure on Ukraine’s government from outside. We are not a country that can be ruled by foreign powers as a dog on a leash,” Tymoshenko said during the parliament session on Thursday. “I don’t care who takes away our sovereignty, East or West.”
At the same time, she does not believe the EU will take away funding if Ukraine stops reforms, and claimed that by voting to strip SAP of its independence, she was actually fighting foreign governance of Ukraine, the same narrative Russia pushes to justify its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
At first, Zelenskyy signed the disputed bill immediately, claiming both NABU and SAP — which were investigating corruption allegations against some of his closest allies — were not effective enough and were filled with Russian agents.
