Crowds formed at Ivan Franko Square in Kyiv on 16 July and came back for three consecutive days, with Lviv and Dnipro out alongside them throughout, Kharkiv and Odesa on the first day, and Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi and Mykolaiv joining by the third. Protesters chanted "Corruption kills" and "Syrsky out"1. The trigger was the removal of Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov the previous day, and the anger pointed past him at Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, whom Fedorov had publicly blamed for blocking his ministry.
Wartime Ukraine has held no elections since the invasion and governs under martial law, which makes the roster of cities worth reading closely. Kyiv, Lviv and Dnipro sustained crowds for the full three days; Kharkiv and Odesa, both within regular missile range, turned out once and stopped. Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not move against the demonstrators and said the protests showed Ukraine "remains a democratic country".
That restraint has an audience outside Ukraine. Kyiv's accession negotiations opened in Brussels in June, and the chapters still to come are the ones that examine judicial independence, anti-corruption bodies and the treatment of civil society. A government that answered street protests with arrests during the same summer would be arguing against its own file.
