Ukrainian lawmaker to self-quarantine after French counterpart diagnosed with COVID-19

Ukrainian lawmaker Oleg Voloshyn, a member of the Opposition Platform – For Life party, was very happy about his recent trip to France and his meeting with conservative lawmaker Jean Luc Reitzer.

Then Reitzer was hospitalized with COVID-19.

On March 6, Voloshyn was also reportedly hospitalized, according to a Facebook post by European Solidarity faction lawmaker Victoria Syumar.

“The speaker and the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine had to intervene,” she wrote. She could not immediately be reached to clarify the statement.

Several hours later, Voloshyn himself commented on the situation. On Facebook, he published a photograph of an official statement from Kyiv’s Oleksandrivska hospital stating that he did not have a respiratory infection.

The lawmaker said he was absolutely healthy, but would voluntarily self-quarantine.

“In Ukraine there are no express tests specifically for the coronavirus (that causes COVID-19),” Voloshyn wrote. “So, in line with the recommendations of the World Health Organization to avoid any risk of being a carrier, I will stay at home until Thursday (March 12), when 14 days will have passed after my 30-minute conversation with Mr. Reitzer.”

He also criticized some journalists and political opponents for allegedly gloating over the news.

Voloshyn’s contact with Reitzer raises the theoretical risk that other political leaders could have been exposed to the coronavirus.

After returning from France, Voloshyn spent multiple days in the Verkhovna Rada in contact with a plethora of lawmakers, public officials and even potentially President Volodymyr Zelensky.

He was notably present in the parliament on March 4–5, when he took part in emergency sessions during which lawmakers voted to dismiss Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers and fire Prosecutor General Ruslan Riaboshapka.

“Is it necessary to immediately impose a quarantine on the Pechersky hills?” wrote Andriy Bohdan, the previous head of the presidential administration, in a sarcastic Facebook post referring to the area where parliament is located.

France’s National Assembly announced Thursday that a lawmaker was infected with COVID-19 and was in intensive care. Reitzer’s staff confirmed that he is the lawmaker in question, according to a March 6 report by Politico Europe.

According to the Ukrainian health ministry’s website, one case of COVID-19 has been confirmed in Ukraine. A man in Chernivtsi Oblast fell ill with the infection after a trip to Italy. The man has been hospitalized and is under observation.

The health ministry’s press service stated that his wife is under home quarantine, but media reported that she was also taken to a hospital after protesters gathered outside her house.

Voloshyn is a controversial figure who has made news beyond Ukraine’s borders for supporting investigations into an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election against current U.S. President Donald Trump.

The lawmaker also had previously submitted an op-ed to the Kyiv Post which sparked a scandal after U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was investigating U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s ties to Russia, accused former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort of ghostwriting the piece to help influence the criminal case against him.

Manafort was eventually found guilty of tax and bank fraud charges and sentenced to 7.5 years in prison.