The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has supported the decision No. 5572 on expulsion of an MP Nadia Savchenko from the delegation of the Ukrainian parliament to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

Some 237 deputies voted for the decision to exclude the item from the decision adopted in 2015, by which the parliament decided to elect Nadia Savchenko out of the quota as a member of the permanent delegation of the Ukrainian parliament to PACE, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reports.

The decision to expel Savchenko is necessary because the circumstances under which she was admitted have changed, Volodymyr Ariev, head of the Ukrainian delegation to PACE, said while presenting the draft resolution.

Savchenko was elected to the delegation on a non-quota basis, he said.

"The introduced changes to the current resolution are due to change the circumstances under which it was made when the newly-elected people's deputy in Ukraine's eighth-term [parliament] Nadia Savchenko was at the time illegally imprisoned on Russian Federation territory on baseless accusations and in obvious breach by the Russian Federation of the international standards for the protection of human rights," the delegation head said.

Savchenko's inclusion in the delegation provided her with PACE support which to a large extent facilitated her release, Ariev said.