Ukrainian opposition calls on Yanukovych to pardon Tymoshenko

13:03, 21.11.2013 1 min read

The UDAR party has asked the president of Ukraine to initiate a meeting of the pardons commission and pardon Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko today.

"We are calling on the president to create a working group on the issues of pardons and to consider the requests made by former presidents Cox and Kwasniewski and 173 parliamentarians and pardon Tymoshenko," Iryna Heraschenko, a member of the UDAR faction, said in parliament on Thursday after all bills on the treatment of convicts abroad had been rejected.

Gerashchenko said she believes that the European Union should impose sanctions on the parliamentarians who voted against these bills.

Arseniy Yatseniuk, leader of the Batkivschyna faction of the parliament, gave Parliament Speaker Volodymyr Rybak a draft decree on pardoning Tymoshenko, asking for it to be given to President Viktor Yanukovych.

"Let him sign it," Yatseniuk said.