The National Security and Defense Council on March 11 ordered Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) to investigate possible treason committed by a number of high-profile lawmakers in 2010.
Back then, 236 pro-Kremlin lawmakers voted to allow the Russian Black Sea fleet to maintain a permanent base in the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol in Crimea until 2042.
In 2014, this fleet was in the vanguard of the Russian annexation of Crimea and the subsequent war against Ukraine.
There are many familiar names among the 236 pro-Kremlin lawmakers who voted to maintain the Russian fleet in Crimea.
Among them are oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, tainted real estate developer Vadym Stolar, current Constitutional Court judge Serhiy Holovatyi and current lawmakers Andrii Derkach, who is alleged to be a Russian agent by the U.S., and Ihor Palytsia, a close ally of oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.
The list also includes fugitive oligarch Yuriy Ivanushchenko, ex-lawmaker and former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, and ex-lawmaker and former Customs and Tax Chief Vitaly Khomutynnik.
Yulia Novikova, nee Lyovochkina is also on the list. She’s the sister of Serhiy Lyovochkin, the current co-head of the pro-Kremlin, 44-member Opposition Platform – For Life faction in parliament.
Most of them represented the pro-Kremlin Party of Regions party led by then-President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych was later ousted by the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution.
However, some lawmakers represented seemingly pro-western parties.
The April 2010 vote in parliament was among the most scandalous in Ukrainian history.
The Russian Black Sea fleet has maintained a permanent base in Sevastopol since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The initial agreement was signed by Russian President Borys Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk in 1992 and allowed the Russians to maintain a fleet with no more than 25,000 service members in Sevastopol until 2017.
As soon as the deadline approached, pro-Kremlin lawmakers began looking for ways to maintain the Russian fleet in Ukraine.
In February 2010, the pro-Kremlin Yanukovych won the Ukrainian presidential election.
In mid-April, he met with then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Ukraine’s regional capital Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million people 500 kilometers east of Kyiv, and signed the so-called Kharkiv Agreements.
The agreements prolonged the Russian fleet’s presence in Sevastopol until 2042 in exchange for a $100 million payment each year and a 30% discount on gas bought by Ukraine from Russia.
Six days later, on April 27, the Ukrainian parliament was to ratify the agreement. Major protests erupted on the streets near the parliament building, while opposition lawmakers attempted to stall the parliamentary session by throwing objects at Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, who also voted for the agreement.
The agreement was widely seen as a sellout of Ukrainian national interests by Yanukovych and the ruling pro-Russian Party of Regions.
In 2014, Russia occupied Crimea using the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol and soon announced that the Kharkiv Agreements were no longer in force.
According to Ukrainian law, lawmakers are exempt from prosecution for the work they do in parliament. However, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, told the media that Ukrainian citizens can still be investigated for possible treason.
“Everyone is equal, if someone committed a crime, it doesn’t matter that they were lawmakers,” said Danilov.
