People's deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, the chairman of UDAR in Donetsk region Yegor Firsov decided to come out of the PPB faction. He wrote about it in a blog on Ukrainska Pravda.
"This decision was very difficult for me. I though over it carefully for a few days but realized that there was no other way. So I'm out of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction. Honestly, I wanted to get out of the faction back then, on the day when it did not support the decision to deprive Igor Kononenko of the mandate. But colleagues advised not to take hasty steps. I calmed down a bit, consulted with people whose opinion I value, and did not change my decision. I cannot stay in the fraction with Mr. Kononenko any longer, because I do not want to cover his corrupt activities and do not want to be associated with them,"- wrote Ye. Firsov.
According to him, PPB faction is following the way of the Party of Regions, covering the corruption schemes.
"Some time ago I thought that I shouldn’t come out, in principle. Corrupts have to come out of the fraction but not those who do not tolerate corruption. But after voting on Kononenko, I realized that most of my colleagues in the faction deliberately covered corruption schemes of the "new family" and they did so even when our journalists and Western partners spoke about that corruption openly. I see how the PPB fraction, thanks to a few people, is confidently following the way of the Party of Regions," - he said.
"Igor Kononenko siphons off millions of euros from Ukraine through shady offshore. His partner, another member of our faction Alexander Granovsky, got 700 thousand dollars in cash from its business partner Adamovskyi, which he didn’t mention in any declaration. And all this is happening under talks about reforms, investments and fight against corruption schemes of the old regime. Of course, I didn’t go to the parliament to participate in this disgrace,"- said Firsov.
According to him, the PPB faction suppresses "all criticism and all dissenting views."
"I raised questions about the structure of the government, when ready decisions were given to us from the PA. I also talked about replacing the members of the CEC, who took the disgraceful decisions and served enough. When I spoke of corruption and criticized Igor Kononenko, I was usually interrupted by Yuriy Lutsenko in a rough way, who insisted that I should have addressed NABU and shouldn’t raise this issue on television. We agreed that I'd take the documents to NABU and I did. But I haven’t got any response so far," - wrote Firsov.