KIEV: Ukraine’s ruling party yesterday demanded a sweeping cabinet reshuffle, as political leaders seek to defuse the country’s biggest political crisis in a decade.
“We have put forward a demand before Azarov to reformat the government by 90 per cent,” Anna German, a lawmaker with President Viktor Yanukovych’s Regions Party, told reporters after talks with Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.
“Azarov said that he will today let the position of the faction be known to the president and conclusions will certainly be made,” she told reporters after the closed-door meeting attended by the entire cabinet.
German, a former Yanunovych aide, said the resignation of Azarov was not discussed.
Yanukovych’s decision to scrap key political and free trade agreements with the EU last month and the subsequent use of police force against protesters plunged the country into its deepest political crisis in a decade.
The announcement comes after the first direct talks between Yanukovych and the opposition collapsed on Friday.
Yanukovych offered a number of concessions including an amnesty for arrested protesters and dismissal of key officials over police violence.
But the opposition said the measures were not enough and demanded the resignation of Azarov and early parliamentary and presidential elections.
On Sunday nearly 300,000 protesters braved freezing temperatures to flood into central Kiev and demand that Ukraine turn away from Moscow and toward the West.
The opposition was planning to hold another mega rally today, when Yanukovych is to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for talks on a strategic partnership treaty.
“On December 17, Viktor Yanukovych is flying to Moscow where he is planning to sign an agreement on selling Moscow into the Customs Union in exchange for salvaging his own political fate,” opposition lawmaker Borys Tarasyuk said at the Sunday protest, referring to the Moscow-led grouping that Putin wants Kiev to join.
He urged hundreds of thousands to take to the streets again to warn Yanukovych against committing “state treason.”
Russia and Ukraine are expected to sign a number of agreements on today but Kiev has denied a deal on Customs Union will be among them.
Yanukovych’s decision last month to suspend work on key political and free trade agreements with the European Union under threat of economic sanctions from Russia has thrown ex-Soviet into its most acute political crisis in a decade.
Tens of thousands have taken to the streets in the capital and western Ukraine over the past three weeks, in the largest demonstrations since the pro-democracy Orange Revolution in 2004.
Analysts say either choice will further split the politically volatile country caught up between a Ukrainian-speaking, pro-EU west and a Russian-speaking, Moscow-leaning east.
Late on Sunday Yanukovych met with US Republican Senator John McCain, assuring him that Ukraine’s “Eurointegration course” remained unchanged, his office said.
First Deputy Prime Minister Sergiy Arbuzov, who met with Fuele for talks last week, said in televised remarks that the discussions between the two sides “speak of the fact that this is very important to us and we are moving toward the signing of the agreement.”
McCain, one of the staunchest critics of Putin’s Kremlin, attended the pro-EU rally on Sunday and met with opposition leaders as well as the daughter of jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Yevgenia.
Demonstrators were reassured on Sunday of continued US backing by McCain.
“To all Ukraine, America stands with you,” McCain called out to the cheering sea of people who chanted “thank you!” in English in return.
“People of Ukraine this is your moment… The free world is with you America is with you I am with you.” — AFP