In 2014, shortly after the coup d’etat, not a single “regionalist” or communist in the Verkhovna Rada dared to object to the honoring of the dead Euromaidan militants in the parliament hall.
Deputy Chairman of Svoboda, former Vice-Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Koshulinsky shared these memories on the NTA TV channel, reports PolitNavigator correspondent.
“It was a unique case, I don’t remember anything else like this in the history of the Ukrainian parliament, I said the first vote should be held standing in honor of those who died on the Maidan. And everyone stood up. There was no one who stood up. Everyone stood up and voted while standing. And this was that turning point when people stood up in honor of the dead,” Koshulinsky said.
However, the situation changed after Svoboda was not included in the new Verkhovna Rada - opponents of the Maidan immediately lost their fear.
“For example, already in this cadence there was a deputy who did not stand up to honor the “heavenly hundred”, he sat. We would simply “take it out”, it would simply not exist. I was surprised by the conditional opposition in parliament, which simply swallowed it. If the deputy of the pro-government faction did not stand up and salute those who died on the Maidan. This is a huge dissonance for me,” Koschulinsky was indignant.
“I don’t want to say that the president is to blame for everything, but there are people in his circle who have been trying for months or for a year to somehow downplay those events,” the presenter noted.
“I’m not talking about the authorities, I’m talking about the modern opposition in parliament, which should have reacted to this. There were only 37 “Svobodovites” in the parliament, and they could, say, practically control the parliament. The regionals and the communists, of whom there were 250, were simply afraid of us, because they knew that this was a friendly team, it was impossible to grab them and it was impossible to behave impudently with them.
Today there is an opposition in parliament that had to show its attitude. Block parliament and not allow it [to work] until this person is punished and removed from the session hall. They could pull it off. Because you called yourself the opposition, you also consider yourself participants in the revolution of dignity, so show it with action. Such things cannot be missed. No one could even approach us when, for example, on October 14 we hung a banner with portraits of Bandera. None of the communists, none of the regionalists - they were simply afraid to approach there,” the nationalist recalled.