Despite a busy agenda planned for March 3, members of Ukraine's Parliament still found time to fight. The session was interrupted and closed because of a fight that broke out between Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko and former member of his faction, lawmaker Serhiy Melnychuk, who used to head the Aidar Batallion.
As a result, parliament didn’t get to consider a number of bills, including the resolution allowing the arrest of Kyiv judges Serhiy Vovk, Oksana Tsarevych and Viktor Kytsyuk, who are accused of unlawful rulings. They were also going to reconsiderthe draft law aimed at stabilizing the currency rate and price.
Melnychuk was expelled from Lyashko’s party faction in February after he and other Aidar fighters several times blocked the Defense Ministry.
On March 3, Melnychuk announced that he joined the People’s Will faction led by Igor Yeremeyev, a controversial lawmaker and millionaire who voted in favor of so called “dictator laws” during the leadership of deposed President Viktor Yanukovych. Lyashko and his counterparts accused Melnychuk of taking a bribe for joining Yeremeyev’s party faction and demanded that he resign.
Melnychuk later told journalists that Lyashko provoked the fight.
Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko and Serhiy Melnychuk, who used to head the Aidar Batallion, start fighting on March 3 in Parliament.
“I won’t allow myself to be offended,” he was quoted as saying by TVi news channel. “The fact that the (Lyashko) party promoted itself with the war and made it (to the parliament) thanks to the Aidar Batallion is well-known,” he said. He said that he joined the People’s Will faction because he didn’t support any of the other factions and didn’t want to be independent.
Kyiv Post staff writer Anastasia Forina can be reached at [email protected]
