Today, Euromaidan Press is signing a public appeal by 50 Ukrainian civil society organizations, including the Dejure Foundation, Anti-Corruption Action Center, and Nobel-winning Centre for Civil Liberties, calling on the European Commission and EU member states to link Ukraine's 2026–2027 budget assistance to measurable rule-of-law reforms.
The letter asks the EU to hold Ukraine to the ten-point reform plan agreed in Lviv in December: independent anti-corruption bodies with expanded jurisdiction, transparent judicial appointments with international expert involvement, reform of the State Bureau of Investigation, internationally vetted judges on the Constitutional Court, strengthened integrity declarations for the judiciary, and an end to government pressure on journalists and whistle-blowers.
These are not new demands. These are not new demands—they are commitments Ukraine and the EU already made together. The letter asks Brussels to enforce them.
We are a news outlet, not an advocacy group. We are neutral about political parties and personalities. But we are not neutral about whether Ukraine should be governed by law or by personal connections. We never have been.
Why conditionality works: the record
Every Ukrainian president since Maidan has tried to weaken these institutions. Every time, external pressure stopped them.
In the winter of 2013–2014, Ukrainians stood on a freezing square and died for the right to live in a country where the state serves citizens, not the other way around. Turning that promise into institutions took a decade—and it did not happen because Ukrainian elites woke up reformed.
NABU and SAPO, Ukraine's main anti-corruption agencies, were created in 2015 under direct EU and IMF pressure. When Ukraine dragged its feet on asset transparency for officials—sabotaging the e-declaration system five times before launch—it was the EU's visa-free regime, not domestic pressure, that finally forced it through.
When Poroshenko's party tried to give parliament the power to fire NABU's leadership by simple majority, Western pressure killed the bill within days.
When Poroshenko, his prosecutor general, and his prime minister all publicly declared Ukraine didn't need an independent anti-corruption court, the IMF, World Bank, and EU withheld nearly $4 billion until they created one, with international experts given veto power over judge selection.
When Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin blocked investigations, Western pressure got him fired. When Poroshenko, his prosecutor general, and his prime minister all publicly declared Ukraine didn't need an independent anti-corruption court, the IMF withheld $1.9 billion until they created one, with international experts given veto power over judge selection.
By early 2018, Ukraine lost a €600 million aid package outright for failing to meet anti-corruption conditions.
None of this was comfortable. All of it worked.
The pattern held even in wartime. In July 2025, President Zelenskyy signed a law stripping NABU and SAPO of their independence. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called Zelenskyy directly. Brussels froze parts of the Ukraine Facility payments. The EU had secretly prepared to bypass Hungary's veto and open Ukraine's first accession negotiating cluster—and killed the plan after Kyiv's anti-corruption crackdown.
Combined with tens of thousands of Ukrainians taking to the streets in what became the Cardboard Revolution, the law was reversed in nine days by a unanimous parliamentary vote.
Conditionality did not punish Ukraine. It saved Ukraine from a self-inflicted wound.
What happened next proved why
Four months later, NABU released the Mindich tapes—surveillance recordings from a 15-month investigation documenting a $100 million kickback scheme at Energoatom, Ukraine's state nuclear operator.
The scheme reached into Zelenskyy's inner circle: his longtime associate Tymur Mindich, identified as the organizer, fled Ukraine hours before NABU arrived. Chief of staff Andriy Yermak, allegedly recorded under the codename "Ali-Baba" ordering pressure on the very investigators the July law aimed to neutralize, resigned.
The same institutions that Zelenskyy's office tried to gut in July exposed corruption at the top of his government in November. NABU director Semen Kryvonos put it plainly: without the July protests, "this case wouldn't exist. It would have been definitely destroyed."
Ukraine’s anti-corruption efforts are central to the war
Ukraine's anti-corruption fight is also its clearest proof of distance from Russia—and the reason that distance must be protected.
In Ukraine, independent institutions backed by street protests investigated the president's closest associates, forced a chief of staff's resignation, and continue to pursue the case.
In Russia, the president's associates are the institutions.
This difference is not incidental to the war—it is central. Russia's hybrid warfare thrives on corruption; every Ukrainian reform taht closes a corruption channel closes an attack surface.
The institutions built after Maidan—painstakingly, against resistance, under external pressure—are not peacetime luxuries to be shelved until "after victory." They make Ukraine harder to break. They are what makes Ukraine worth backing: a society that, when its own government crossed a line, mobilized in the streets and forced a correction within nine days.
Our position
We can only do our work—reporting on Ukraine for an international audience without fear or favor—in a country where institutions are not at the mercy of whoever holds power this month. The reforms this letter calls for are not someone else's cause. They are the conditions under which independent journalism survives.
We will keep reporting impartially. We will cover reformers when they fail and institutions when they disappoint. Signing this letter does not change any of that. It makes the underlying premise visible: we believe Ukraine's survival and Ukraine's transformation are part of the same fight.
That is the line we are drawing today, in public, with our name attached.
