Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has resumed work after a month-long break, but lawmakers achieved very little on their third day back on May 18.
In its biggest failure of the day, parliament failed to adopt a resolution on sanctions against former President Viktor Yanukovych and his associates. Only 202 lawmakers backed it, well short of the 226 votes needed.
If it had been passed, the bill would have allowed the National Security and Defense Council to impose sanctions against people “who posed real and/or potential threats to national interests, national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and who promoted terrorist activities.”
Those in line to be sanctioned included Yanukovych’s elder son Oleksandr Yanukovych, Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, a former lawmaker and associate of Yanukovych, Vitaliy Zakharchenko, the former interior minister, Viktor Pshonka, the former prosecutor general, Yanukovych’s former chief of staff Andriy Klyuyev, and others.
Yegor Sobolev who heads the parliament’s committee on corruption, also suggested to include on the list some current lawmakers, such as Oleksandr Vilkul from the Opposition Bloc.
While the Ukrainian parliament failed to impose new sanctions, the Council of the European Union in March extended for a year certain EU sanctions against a number of former Ukrainian officials considered responsible for embezzling government funds, including the ex-president and his former officials.
Meanwhile, Obolon District Court in Kyiv postponed its hearing of the treason case against ex-president Yanukovych from May 18 to 10 a.m. on May 29. Earlier, Russia’s Rostov court said that it would not set up a video link with Yanukovych for his questioning, saying that it hadn’t received a request from the Obolon court to assist in organizing a video conference.
Yanukovych, who has been living in exile in Russia, is accused of supporting actions with the goal of changing Ukraine’s state borders, as well as helping Russia start its military intervention in Ukraine in 2014.
He testified in late November via a video link from Russia’s Rostov-on-Don as a witness in the investigation into the use of firearms against EuroMaidan Revolution protesters in February 2014 by members of the now-disbanded special riot police, the Berkut. During the hearing in November, Ukraine’s prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko informed Yanukovych that he would be charged with treason.
The Verkhovna Rada did, however, manage to adopt amendments to the Criminal Code abolishing the so-called “Savchenko law.” Named after Nadiya Savchenko, a Ukrainian pilot who was kidnapped by pro-Russian separatists and who was held in Russian prisons for two years on charges of murdering two Russian journalists in the Donbas, it equated one day in a pretrial detention center to two days in prison.
Ukraine’s deputy interior minister, Vadym Troyan, praised the move. According to him, due to this law, which was passed last November, more than 10,000 criminals had been released earlier than they should have been, and during the period the law was in effect they committed some 2,000 crimes.
Another important vote on the agenda was a bill that would place restrictions on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, the largest denomination in Ukraine and the only church recognized by the other Eastern Orthodox churches. There are approximately 17,000 Orthodox parishes in Ukraine, some 40 percent of which are controlled by the Moscow Patriarchate, according to official Ukrainian data. It is governed by Russian Patriarch Kirill, who is seen as an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The proposed legislation aims to assign a special status to churches whose leaders are based in “an aggressor state.” The legislation would force the Moscow-based branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to renew its registration with the authorities within three months, and would place it under extra supervision.
However, lawmakers decided to postpone the vote on the law, as it was reckoned there were not enough votes to pass the controversial legislation.
Commenting on the proposed law, Patriarch Kirill accused the President Petro Poroshenko of trying to deprive millions of Ukrainian believers of the right to practice their faith.
