11:47 12.11.2019

Protest against creation of Ukrainian land market under way near Verkhovna Rada

2 min read
Protest against creation of Ukrainian land market under way near Verkhovna Rada

Members of the All-Ukrainian Agrarian Council and the political parties National Corps, Svoboda, and Right Sector (banned in Russia) are staging a protest near the Ukrainian parliament headquarters in Kyiv on Tuesday against the adoption of a bill on forming an agricultural land market in the country.

Several hundred people have gathered on Constitution Square, denouncing the creation of an agricultural land market in Ukraine as an attempt by the authorities to sell Ukrainian land to tycoons and transnational corporations. Activists have parked about 15 items of farming machinery in front of the parliament building.

The protesters are demanding that parliament recall bills amending legislative acts on the turnover of agricultural land that pave the way for creating an agricultural land market.

At the same time, another rally – in favor of abolishing Ukraine's moratorium of land sales - is taking place near the parliament headquarters as well. Its participants are calling for the start of land reform via forming a transparent agricultural land market.

On October 18, the Ukrainian Parliamentary Committee on Agrarian Policy and Land Relations recommended that the Verkhovna Rada pass a bill on the turnover of agricultural land. Batkivschyna leader Yulia Tymoshenko said then that the committee's decision was illegitimate as, as Tymoshenko said, the committee had adopted it secretly, in the absence of representatives of other factions.

A group of the Servant of the People faction's MPs, including chairman of the abovementioned committee Mykola Solsky, registered an alternative bill in the Verkhovna Rada on October 10 that suggests lifting the ban on the alienation of agricultural land in all forms of ownership on October 1, 2020.

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