A coalition of Ukrainian civil society organizations coordinated by the Agency for Legislative Initiatives presented its third shadow report on Ukraine’s progress under EU accession Chapters 23 and 24 in October. It rates Ukraine’s anti-corruption progress as “limited” and says attempts to pressure anti-corruption staff have not stopped.

The European Commission presents its yearly assessment of Ukraine’s progress toward membership on 4 November. Kyiv can’t close any negotiating chapter until it meets interim benchmarks in these two and on democratic institutions. The EU has made the independence of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) a condition for membership. Signs of pressure on their investigators can cost Ukraine a better anti-corruption score, European Pravda suggests.

Suspensions, detentions, and suspected bugs

The report covers September 2025 to July 2026. That period began weeks after parliament passed a law curtailing NABU and SAPO’s independence in July 2025. Lawmakers restored most of their guarantees nine days later, following public protests. The first incident the report lists came six weeks later.

In September 2025, a Kyiv court suspended a NABU detective over an allegedly false asset declaration. Ukrainska Pravda identified him as Vitalii Tiebiekin. The court set bail at nearly UAH 3 million (about $73,000), an amount the report says breaches the Criminal Procedure Code.

Five days later, the Prosecutor General’s Office announced a new suspicion against a NABU detective already in custody on suspicion of aiding Russia. Ukrainska Pravda identified him as Ruslan Mahamedrasulov. Investigators from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the State Bureau of Investigation ran that case.

In October, NABU said SBU officers had searched the relatives of another detective.

The pressure continued into 2026:

• February: NABU said that, according to preliminary data, officers of a law enforcement agency had tried to install surveillance equipment in the home of a unit head who is part of the Midas investigation team. SBU officers could have been behind it, SAPO chief Oleksandr Klymenko said at a briefing that day.
• March: SBU officers detained a NABU employee at a checkpoint near Sumy while he was on duty there, NABU said. He was released the next day, according to Suspilne. The SBU said he warranted extra checks because he came from occupied territory, didn’t name his workplace, and had Russian numbers in his phone.
• June: NABU found devices that could have been used for covert surveillance in another unit head’s apartment. Men posing as law enforcement had told the neighbor upstairs that a Russian spy lived below him, and NABU said its detectives identified one of them as a serving SBU officer.

The report says the incidents may indicate indirect political pressure intended to obstruct high-level corruption investigations.

Plea deals drive the court’s growth. Legal fixes stall

At the same time, the report credits the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) with better results. In 2025, it adjudicated 114 cases involving 180 people, up from 88 cases involving 137 people in 2024, and issued 109 verdicts, compared with 77. However, 72 of the 2025 verdicts came through plea agreements, while verdicts after trial slipped from 39 to 37.

Structural limits remain. NABU still relies on the SBU to intercept communications. The authors recommend extending its jurisdiction to all top officials, particularly the head and deputy heads of the President’s Office. SAPO says the legal grounds for its first external audit arose in March 2026, but the rules still set no scope for the audit and no deadline for forming its commission.

Meanwhile, the 2026–2030 Anti-Corruption Strategy remains stalled. The parliamentary anti-corruption committee unanimously recommended adopting it at first reading in July, the report notes.

On 22 October, however, lawmakers dropped it from the agenda again for “lack of votes,” MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak said on his Facebook. Days earlier, Ukraine and the EU had set up a joint task force to accelerate rule-of-law and anti-corruption reforms.