Volodymyr Zelensky faced public protests on Tuesday night after parliament backed a controversial bill limiting the power of anti-corruption agencies.

Thousands of people, including veterans, gathered close to the president’s office to demand that Mr Zelensky back down amid widespread international condemnation over the proposal.

The demonstrations, which have reportedly spread to Lviv and Dnipro, are the first public protests against the Ukrainian president since the Russian invasion in February 2022.

Earlier in the day, cries of “Shame!” were heard in the Verkhovna Rada as MPs backed giving the prosecutor general, a position appointed directly by the president, more power over the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (Sapo).

These powers include the ability to reassign or redirect investigations.

The bill was pushed by the president’s office and came after both agencies investigated senior Ukrainian officials, including those close to the president. After being passed by parliament, it was signed into law by Mr Zelensky on Tuesday evening.

In an address early on Wednesday, Mr Zelensky said the Nabu and Sapo would “work” regardless of the changes, adding that Ukraine’s anti-corruption infrastructure needed to be cleared of “Russian influences”.

“The prosecutor general is determined to ensure that punishment is inevitable in Ukraine,” he said.

Protesters on the streets of Kyiv demanded that Mr Zelensky veto the measure.

Semen Kryvonos, the head of Nabu, urged Mr Zelensky not to approve the proposal, saying it would “destroy” the work of the two institutions.

Demonstrators said they believed Andriy Yermak, Mr Zelensky’s chief of staff, was behind the move, and that Ukraine was “turning into Russia”. Some carried placards that read: “Welcome to Russia.”

Those on the streets were predominantly under the age of 30. Signs reading “Azov, where are you?” were held aloft, in reference to the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov Brigade, which was formerly a far-Right militia.

Pasha, a Ukrainian who attended the protest, said that he believed the government was attempting to sneak through the legislation.

Oleg, a Ukrainian anti-corruption journalist, said it was the worst attempt by the government yet to erode Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption authorities.

Opponents of the Ukrainian president have long raised concerns about him centralising power under the guise of wartime necessity, and the move follows weeks of manoeuvres against pro-reform and anti-corruption activists.

The protests came a day after Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) agents carried out raids on the Nabu and Sapo offices, alleging a broad range of crimes from Russian infiltration to traffic violations. Fifteen Nabu officials were placed under investigation.

Nabu, which was set up with the assistance of the FBI and the EU, recently opened a criminal case against Oleksiy Chernyshov, a close ally of the president, on charges of abuse of power and illegal enrichment. He denied the charges, but was dismissed in last week’s government reshuffle.

On Tuesday, Brussels said it was “concerned” by the draft law and pointed out that its payments to Ukraine were “conditional on progress in transparency, judicial reform and democratic governance”.

In the Ukrainian parliament, the bill passed with the support of 263 MPs, with 13 abstaining and 13 voting against.

Oleksiy Goncharenko, an opposition MP who voted against the measure, said the bill was “about the end of the independence of anti-corruption bodies inside Ukraine”, blaming the “personal choice of President Zelensky”.

The president may have been motivated by the recent investigation of Mr Chernyshov, the former vice-president, who is “very close” to him, said Mr Goncharenko.

He added: “I’m not a supporter of President Zelensky at all, but at the same time, internationally, I’ve always supported his efforts. But today he made a very bad choice … and it will definitely make Ukraine weaker.”

Referring to Russia, he said: “Small democracies can win over bigger autocracies. But small autocracies will sooner or later be swallowed by bigger ones.”

A second measure to immediately send the legislation to the president’s desk for his signature into law passed with 246 votes.

Meaghan Mobbs, the daughter of Keith Kellog, the US special envoy to Ukraine, said: “This decision is truly, unbelievably, mind-bogglingly stupid. It happens at the worst possible time given the recent positive shifts in US policy.”

Ukrainian celebrities implored Mr Zelensky not to sign the law, including the popular chef Yehven Klopotenko and Serhiy Prytula, an actor turned military fundraiser.

Anastasia Radina, the head of the parliamentary anti-corruption committee, was reportedly the only member of Mr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party to speak out against the legislation ahead of the vote.

“I ask you, colleagues, not to deceive yourselves and the people that you are voting for some mild strengthening of the prosecutor general, and not for the dismantling of Nabu and Sapo,” she said.

“After the amendments that the committee added to this bill today, contrary to the rules, the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office becomes a fiction for budget funds.”

On Tuesday, Nabu announced that, together with Sapo, it had charged a senior SBU officer and two accomplices with extorting a $300,000 bribe. The case involved a military officer accused of facilitating illegal border crossings for men seeking to flee the country.

No senior government figure had publicly defended the law by Tuesday afternoon, amid a furious backlash from Ukrainian civil society.

“Last week, we ran an editorial warning of an anti-democratic backslide in Ukraine,” said Olga Rudenko, the editor in chief of the respected Kyiv Independent. “Today, it’s happening in plain sight. This isn’t what our people have been fighting and dying for, and it’s devastatingly unfair to them.”

The German foreign office said in a statement: “The independence and strength of Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions have been key to reform efforts of recent years. Ukraine will continue to be measured against their progress.”

“Europe helped pull Zelensky’s relationship back from the brink of collapse after the Oval Office debacle. But now this unforced error by Kyiv. Where does it leave Ukraine’s EU accession?” said Nigel Gould-Davies, a former UK ambassador to Belarus and senior fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

Before the vote, Guillaume Mercier, a spokesman for the European Commission, said: “[Nabu and Sapo] are crucial to Ukraine’s reform agenda and must operate in an independent way to fight corruption and maintain public trust.”

“The EU provides significant financial assistance to Ukraine conditional on progress in transparency, judicial reform and democratic governance. Ukraine’s accession [to the EU] will require a strong capacity to combat corruption and to ensure institutional resilience.”

In June, a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 65 per cent of Ukrainians trust Mr Zelensky, while 30 per cent do not.

The poll was conducted using a random sample of 1,011 adults across the country, excluding areas occupied by Russia.