You're reading: Tymoshenko: Donbas special status, amnesties will not bring peace into Ukraine

The parliamentary faction of the Batkivschyna Party did not vote for the bills proposed by Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko regarding a special status for a part of the Donbas region and amnesties for members of illegal armed groups, said faction leader Serhiy Sobolev.

“It is not only that we did not vote for these laws, we pulled out our cards so that there is not even a doubt that votes were cast for that,” Sobolev said at a briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday, Sep. 16.

For her part, Batkivschyna party leader Yulia Tymoshenko said that public representatives must demand that senior members of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada should publicize the names of those who voted for the bills.

“I think that now civil society, journalists must tell all parliamentary groups and factions to publicize the results of their votes,” she said.

“The Batkivschyna party and Batkivschyna parliamentarians did not vote for these humiliating treacherous laws,” said Tymoshenko, adding that in her view, the new laws would not bring peace to the country and that Ukraine should return to the “Geneva format” of negotiations.

It was reported that the bills were passed at a Verkhovna Rada session that was closed to the media.