Tuesday the Ukrainian Parliament was supposed to begin its working after the summer holidays. It was planned to start with the President’s address. However, it has been for the third time during last year that Viktor Yushchenko failed to deliver his address to the MPs. Once again that happened because of Timoshenko’s bloc.  

The loyal to Yulia deputies were going to leave the hall after the President took the floor. They wanted to take a revenge on the head of state for the outraged honour of their leader, who had been accused of high treason during all the August, by the Presidential secretariat. When the President learnt about those intentions, he just did not come. 

In the absence of Yushchenko, it was the deputies from the NUNS bloc to attempt to teach a lesson to the refractory Prime Minister. They brought a Georgian flag with them and began to demand publicly that their colleagues vote for the resolution supporting Georgia and condemning Russia. That way Timoshenko’s people could be able to deny the charges of bypassing with the Kremlin. However, they did not wish to do it and ignored the advice by the coalition.    

Having wasted away half a day on useless geopolitical debates, on late evening the Ukrainian parliament suddenly began to churn out its decisions.     

First, the Rada elected two deputies speaker from Timoshenko’s bloc and Party of Regions of Yanukovich. Then it set about consideration of a package of laws related to restriction of the President’s powers and simplifying the impeachment procedure.  

The offended NUNS deputies gathered at night at their faction meeting and decided to quit the coalition. The decision was not taken unanimously: there was a vote of 39 for, 9 against and 14 votes abstained.

Now Timoshenko is supported by the “Narodnaya Samooborona” group and its leader Yuri Lutsenko, who is also the interior minister. Another enforcement body – Ukrainian security service – was also submitted to the Prime Minister by the Parliament’s decision. Yanukovich has influence on the prosecutor’s office. Thus, in case it comes to extremes, Yushchenko would only have the army as leverage of influence. However, according to the new laws, the defense minister may be sent to resignation by the Prime Minister again.   

Another political crisis may not happen in Ukraine, though. The matter is the break of coalition will be registered juridically only on 13 September. And everything may have changed by that term. The Timoshenko’s bloc affirms they are true to democratic ideals and voted jointly with Yanukovich people just for the country’s good.