President trying to cover parliamentary crisis with wartime rhetoric – Friz

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is trying to cover up a parliamentary crisis with wartime rhetoric, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence (European Solidarity faction) Iryna Friz said.

"The president is once again trying to substitute the problem of his own parliamentary crisis with wartime rhetoric. When dozens of MPs from the ruling faction want to resign and some 'Servants' fail to maintain discipline in the session hall, Bankova should not look for loud formulas about the front, but honestly answer why the mono-majority has lost control," Friz told Interfax-Ukraine on Monday.

According to her, parliament is neither "a penal battalion for political failures nor a decoration for presidential statements."

"If an MP does not work, the issue is not loud words but the political responsibility of the ruling party that brought these people into parliament. It is very convenient to first bring your own faction to collapse and then shift the blame onto the army, mobilization and the war," Friz said.

As reported earlier, Zelenskyy said during the war MPs will have to either serve in parliament in accordance with Ukrainian legislation or discuss possible amendments to mobilization laws that would allow lawmakers to go to the front.

"Since the first days of the full-scale invasion there have been MPs who wanted to resign. There may be different wishes and attitudes toward them, but we are under martial law and must defend our state. Therefore, MPs will either serve in parliament in accordance with Ukrainian legislation, or I am ready to discuss with parliament representatives amendments to the mobilization law so MPs can go to the front. If you do not serve the state in parliament, then serve the state at the front," Zelenskyy told journalists on Saturday.