Members of the Batkivschyna, UDAR, and Svoboda parliamentary factions left the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, following their failure to pass a bill on the decriminalization of Articles 364 and 365 of the Criminal Code on which Yulia Tymoshenko was convicted, an Interfax-Ukraine reporter in the parliament has said.
As reported, 161 of the 389 parliamentarians registered in the
parliament session hall on Friday supported the bill submitted by Viktor
Shvets, a member of the Batkivschyna faction, on December 14 (226 votes
were needed for the bill to be approved).
On October 11, 2011, Pechersky District Court in Kyiv sentenced
Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for overstepping her authority when
signing 2009 gas contracts with Russia.
Later on, Batkivschyna, UDAR, and Svoboda declared their intention to
fight together for the release of the ex-premier and former Interior
Minister of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko from prison. In connection with this,
the parliamentary opposition submitted to the parliament for
consideration a bill on the decriminalization of the articles of the
Criminal Code under which Tymoshenko and Lutsenko were convicted.
