Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn has asked MPs to approve his resignation.
"Dear colleagues, I am asking you to consider the issue and decide on my resignation," he said while opening the parliament's sitting on Wednesday in the morning.
He said that the vote on the bill on the basis of state language policy on Tuesday was held in his absence, as the president called him.
"I was deceived, Ukraine was deceived, the people was deceived," Lytvyn said in response to the noise in the sitting hall.
"A former friend of mine, with whom I used to break bread, has betrayed me. Absolutely," Lytvyn said pointing at his first deputy Adam Martyniuk, who hosted the evening session on Tuesday.
His words drew exclamations from those present in the session hall, to which Lytvyn replied, "My distinguished colleagues, I have the right to say whatever I think. This is true."
He asked his first deputy Adam Martyniuk to put the issue on his resignation to vote and consider it on Thursday and left the sitting hall.
It was reported earlier that the Verkhovna Rada had passed the bill on the basis of state language policy by 248 votes on Tuesday.
Lytvyn did not attend the session, as he was meeting with the president at the time, and the session was hosted by his first deputy Adam Martyniuk. Lytvyn had said earlier that the language bill had to be finalized and could not be considered before the summer vacation starting July 6.
The parliamentary opposition said the language bill was passed on July 3 with numerous irregularities.
Hundreds of opposition activists, particularly those supporting the Batkivschyna Party and the Svoboda All-Ukrainian Union, gathered near the Ukrainian House in Kyiv immediately following the voting to express their protest against the bill, and clashes with police were recorded late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday.
About 700 protesters remained near the Ukrainian Home on Wednesday morning. Parliamentarians Arseniy Yatseniuk, Hennadiy Moskal, Mykola Martynenko, Roman Zabzaliuk, Yuriy Stets, Oleksandr Tretiakov, and Andriy Parubiy formed a living chain. President Viktor Yanukovych's press conference, which was originally planned to take place in the Ukrainian House on Wednesday, was later postponed.
