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Russian lawmaker slams Ukrainian parliament’s no-confidence vote

Ukraine’s parliament on Tuesday failed to send Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his government to resignation

© Maxim Nikitin/TASS

MOSCOW, February 16. /TASS/. A Russian lawmaker said on Tuesday the Ukrainian parliament’s no-confidence vote was a tragicomedy and farce.

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Ukraine’s parliament fails to send Yatsenyuk government to resignation

"The situation at [Ukraine’s Verkhovna] Rada (parliament) is a tragicomedy and farce. The lawmakers recognize the government’s work as unsatisfactory and fail a no-confidence vote," Leonid Slutsky, the chairman of the committee for the affairs of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Eurasian integration and relations with compatriots at the Russian State Duma lower parliament house, told TASS.

"Even President [Pyotr] Poroshenko demanded the cabinet be reshaped and called on the prosecutor general and the prime minister to resign in a bid to ‘regain confidence in the authorities.’ Obviously, Poroshenko did it under pressure from the West which is threatening to deprive Kiev of loans if it fails to conduct reforms," he said. "But the prosecutor general happens to be on a leave at the moment and the parliament fails to score enough votes to send the government to resignation."

Ukraine’s parliament on Tuesday failed to send Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his government to resignation. A no-confidence vote was supported by 194 lawmakers whereas at least 226 votes are needed to pass a resolution. So, the situation in the Ukrainian parliament looks quite paradoxical as several minutes before the no-confidence voting the Rada recognized the government’s work as unsatisfactory.

The Rada discussed the government’s report of its work in the past year for about four hours. Before that, President Pyotr Poroshenko came up with an address to the nation where he actually called on Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to step down as seventy percent of the country’s population disprove the government’s activities.

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