The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, has canceled six meetings scheduled for October because at least eight lawmakers have recently contracted COVID-19, Parliament Speaker Dmytro Razumkov announced during the session on Sept. 30.
Instead of taking votes, the lawmakers will work in committees through Oct. 1–2 and Oct. 6–9, Razumkov said. And if the number of new coronavirus cases keeps rising, they may hold even these meetings online. It will keep the 423 lawmakers out of the session hall.
The lawmakers are scheduled to resume their meetings on Oct. 20, when they will try to pass the 2020 state budget bill in the first reading. After that, their next meeting is on Nov. 1.
Several lawmakers tested positive for coronavirus recently, including ex-President Petro Poroshenko, a lawmaker with the 27-member European Solidarity faction; Kira Rudyk, a lawmaker with the 19-member Voice, and Zhan Beleniuk, an athlete and member of the ruling Servant of the People party that holds 246 seats. They all went public with the diagnosis.
According to Yaroslav Zheleznyak, a lawmaker with the Voice party, at least eight lawmakers got infected with COVID-19 recently.
Neither Zheleznyak nor Razumkov have disclosed the names of other lawmakers who contracted COVID-19.
The first lawmaker who announced he had COVID-19 was Serhiy Shakhov. He began showing symptoms on March 15 after a trip to Italy, and six days later he was admitted to hospital with pneumonia.
But after his recovery, Shakhov turned into a COVID-19 denier. In August, he sat down for an interview with the leader of an organization that has held anti-mask and anti-quarantine protests in Kyiv and has been spreading conspiracy theories about the pandemic. In a video posted on YouTube, Shakhov said that “the coronavirus disease was fabricated by sick heads at the World Health Organization” and accused Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers of profiteering from the pandemic.
Kyiv Post staff writer Bermet Talant contributed to this story.
