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Ukraine’s parliament expels Savchenko from PACE delegation

According to a non-affiliated MP Vitaly Kupriy "Savchenko disgraces Ukraine and threatens its national security"

Nadezhda Savchenko Artyom Geodakyan/TASS

Nadezhda Savchenko

© Artyom Geodakyan/TASS

KIEV, December 22. /TASS/. Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has expelled MP Nadezhda Savchenko from Ukraine’s delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

A total of 237 MPs approved the decision with the required minimum of 226 votes.

The expulsion of the scandalous lawmaker from the delegation to PACE comes after a call from a non-affiliated MP Vitaly Kupriy who said that "Savchenko disgraces Ukraine and threatens its national security."

"We want to safeguard the committee, the state and our Armed Forces, we simply want to protect our military," MP Yuri Bereza of the People’s Front, the co-author of the regulation, said.

Read also

Ukraine's Rada deputy Savchenko says government should step down

The formal reason for the expulsion is that Savchenko was elected in order to be released from Russian custody and the Ukrainian MPs were forced to violate the quota principle on forming the list of delegates from factions.

Earlier, the All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland" or Batkivshchyna faction in Ukraine’s parliament expelled Savchenko. In late October, the MP wrote a statement on leaving the party. Savchenko was elected to the Verkhovna Rada as its member in 2014.

Savchenko fell into disfavor of Ukraine’s authorities after her private trip to Minsk and her talks with the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics earlier this month. Savchenko, the former pilot, had been sentenced in Russia to 22 years in jail over complicity in the killing of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine. She spent nearly two years in Russian custody and was pardoned by the Russian president on May 25, 2016.

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