You're reading: Lutsenko: Yanukovych team trying to ‘buy members of parliament’ for new coalition

The team of Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych is trying to buy MPs to create a new parliamentary coalition and prevent the unification of the opposition, People's Self-Defense leader Yuriy Lutsenko has said.

"A competition between those who have already sold themselves at retail prices and those who would like to sell themselves at wholesale prices has in fact been conducted in parliament in the last few days. Wholesale costs more than retail – right up to the post of prime minister and various ministers.

"Martynenko, Zhvaniya, Kostenko, Baloha, and other leaders of certain ‘groups’ of the OU-PSD [Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense] that are opposed to the usurpation of power, along with the Regions Party, are the confirmation of this struggle between wholesalers willing to sell themselves and retailers who have already done so," he told Interfax Ukraine on Tuesday, while commenting on the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada of amendments to the law on the parliament’s rules of procedure, which allow certain MPs to form a coalition.