Strasbourg, April 27 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Members of the Ukrainian parliamentary delegation to the PACE, who represent the country's opposition, walked out of the session hall during Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's speech at the PACE session in Strasbourg on Tuesday as a sign of protest against the signing and ratification of the agreement extending the lease on the Russian naval base in Ukraine by 25 more years.
An Interfax-Ukraine reporter said that they left the session hall about five minutes after Yanukovych had started to speak.
"We were obliged to leave the hall when the president began to speak. We were protesting against the betrayal of Ukrainian interests," a delegation member and Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense MP, Olha Herasymiuk, told reporters.
At the same time, OU-PSD MP Mustafa Dzhemilev remained in the hall. He put a question to the president after his speech regarding the rights of Crimean Tatars in Ukraine.
