Ukraine’s president pledged a new course after protesters criticized his signing of a bill to strip anticorruption agencies of power.

KYIV - Ukrainian officials scrambled to respond Wednesday to the eruption of mass protests as well as alarm among its European allies after President Volodymyr Zelensky signed legislation that many fear will neutralize the country’s main anti-corruption bodies and roll back reforms introduced after a pro-Western revolution more than 10 years ago.

The president has defended the move as a necessary step to rid the two agencies of “Russian influence” and to address why some cases have been stalled for years.