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Ukrainian prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk resigns Ukrainian prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk resigns
(about 2 hours later)
Ukraine's prime minister has tendered his resignation, berating parliament for failing to pass legislation to take control over the country's increasingly precarious energy situation and to increase army financing. Ukraine's prime minister has resigned after the governing coalition collapsed, in a sign that five months after the Maidan protests led to a change of government, the country's political system is still beset by discord.
Earlier on Thursday two parties quit a parliamentary coalition, a move that opened the way for a new election to clear what a politician called "Moscow agents" from the chamber, a decision welcomed by the president, Petro Poroshenko. The government is struggling to defeat an insurgency by pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country, where a Malaysia Airlines jet was downed last Thursday.
The resignation of the prime minister, Arseny Yatseniuk, could leave a hole at the heart of decision-making when Ukraine is struggling to fund a war with pro-Russia rebels in its east and dealing with the aftermath of a plane crash that killed 298 people. Arseniy Yatsenyuk, one of the leaders of the Maidan protests, was seen by many Ukrainians as a safe pair of hands, with his mild manner and intellectual demeanour. But he grew angry during Ukraine's parliamentary session as it failed to pass legislation to increase army financing and regulate the country's energy situation.
The usually mild-mannered Yatseniuk bellowed at politicians who had failed to pass a law to allow a liberalisation of control over Ukraine's pipeline system. "History will not forgive us," he told parliament. "Our government now has no answer to the questions – how are we to pay wages, how are we tomorrow morning going to send fuel for armoured vehicles, how will we pay those families who have lost soldiers, to look after the army?"
He said Ukraine's politicians were at risk of losing the hearts and minds of the thousands who protested for months in the "Maidan" protests in favour of joining Europe and against a pro-Moscow president. The president, Petro Poroshenko, welcomed the move, which will lead to new elections, saying: "Society wants a full reset of state authorities."
"History will not forgive us," he told parliament. Although Ukrainians elected Poroshenko in May, there have yet to be new parliamentary elections since the former president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled. Yatsenyuk is likely to stay on in a caretaker role before a new poll.
"Millions of people made this revolution. We did not take the European choice but the 'heavenly hundred' and thousands of other Ukrainians did," he said, referring to those killed, mainly by sniper fire, during the protests. Rumours are that Poroshenko wants to end the insurgency in the east before 24 August – Ukrainian independence day. The army has made significant gains in driving the rebels out of a number of towns, including the former stronghold of Slavyansk, but the separatists still control Donetsk, a city of 1 million, and much of the region around it.
Yatseniuk, who has been central to talks with the European Union and the United States, cannot leave office immediately, political analysts said, because he is obliged to oversee his duties before a new prime minister and government are installed. The area where flight MH17 fell to the ground last Thursday, apparently after being destroyed by a missile, is also inside rebel-held territory. This has led to controversial cleanup efforts in which the site has been left unsecured for a week since the crash. Bodies recovered at the site were dispatched by train on Monday night to the government-controlled city of Kharkiv. On Wednesday, the first bodies were flown to the Netherlands, where they will be identified before being flown to their countries of origin. More than half of the 298 victims were Dutch.
But his impassioned speech underlined the frustration of many in Ukraine that change in the higher echelons of power was taking too much time. Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said monitors had found new chunks of fuselage on Thursday in locations they had not visited before – a sign of how much work remains to be done for a proper investigation to take place. He also said the monitors were still finding human remains at the site.
The mood has also sunk in Kiev since the downing of a Malaysian airliner in rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine last week, even though Ukrainian forces are making headway in the military campaign against the separatists. Two Australian diplomats visited the crash site on Thursday, the first to visit the area. Australia lost 28 citizens in the crash and the prime minister, Tony Abbott, said Australian police officers were on standby to travel to the crash site and help secure it.
Poroshenko welcomed the decision by the nationalist party Svoboda and the Udar (Punch) party of the former boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko to withdraw from the majority coalition in parliament. "There has still not been anything like a thorough professional search of the area where the plane went down and there can't be while the site is controlled by armed men with vested interest in the outcome of the investigation," he said.
"Society wants a full reset of state authorities," Poroshenko said in a statement, adding that the move showed that those who decided to quit the coalition were following the will of the people. The Dutch Safety Board, which is coordinating the investigation, said on Thursday that material from both black box flight recorders had been downloaded by British experts, who had found no evidence they had been tampered with.There is mounting evidence that MH17 was brought down in error by separatists who thought they were firing a Buk missile at a Ukrainian military jet. Rebel leaders have denied they were ever in possession of a Buk system, but numerous eyewitnesses told the Guardian they saw a Buk in the area on the day of the crash. One rebel boss, Alexander Khodakovsky, told Reuters that the rebels did have a Buk, which he intimated may have come from Russia. He later insisted he had been misquoted.
Politicians and political activists have complained that while Ukraine has a new president, it has yet to elect a new parliament since the toppling of Viktor Yanukovych in February, and accuse his supporters of hampering its work.
Yatseniuk said that by blocking legislation, such as a bill to exert tighter control over the energy sector in the face of dwindling natural gas supplies from Russia, the parliament was putting Ukraine's future at risk.
By not tackling budget spending, it was also putting the lives of Ukraine's soldiers at risk, he said.
"Our government now has no answer to the question: how are we to pay wages, how are we tomorrow morning going to send fuel for armoured vehicles, how will we pay those families who have lost soldiers, to look after the army?" he asked parliament.
"Those people who are sitting there under fire, can we just think of them?"