Posted on 02/23/2014 5:45:15 AM PST by 1rudeboy
(Reuters) - Ukraine's parliament, exercising power since mass protests put the president to flight, named its new speaker as acting head of state on Sunday to replace Viktor Yanukovich and worked to form a new government.
In a hectic round of voting in the chamber, near where triumphant but wary protesters remain encamped on Kiev's main square, lawmakers stripped the still missing president of his abandoned country home. Its brash opulence, now on display, has fuelled demands that the Russian-backed, elected leader and his allies be held to account for corruption on a grand scale.
The European Union and Russia, vying for influence over the huge former Soviet republic on their borders, considered their next moves. EU officials said they were ready to help Ukraine, while Russia, its strategy of funding Yanukovich in tatters, said it would keep cash on hold until it sees who is in charge.
Parliament-appointed security officials announced legal moves against members of the ousted administration and those responsible for sniper fire and other police attacks on demonstrators in violence that left 82 dead in Kiev last week.
A day after dismissing Yanukovich with the help of votes from his own party, parliament handed his powers temporarily to Oleksander Turchinov, who was elected speaker on Saturday.
An ally of newly freed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, Turchinov called for an interim prime minister to be in place by Tuesday to run the country until a presidential election called for May 25. Among contenders may be Tymoshenko, 53, who lost to Yanukovich in 2010 and was then jailed for corruption.
Yanukovich, 63, denounced what he called a "coup d'état" reminiscent of Nazi Germany. He spoke on television on Saturday from what looked like a hotel room in a city close to the Russian border.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
“The royal scale of the residence played, however, a bad joke on the president last winter, when its heating system could not cope with the coldest weather for six years. The president was left freezing in his drawing room, where the temperature refused to rise above 16 degrees Centigrade. “
He couldn't handle 61F? What kinda pansy Putin lover was this guy? LOL!
Unlike my fam, he likely doesn’t pay the gas bill and runs his thermostat above the 62F setting we use here in our compound.
The president was elected by MASSIVE fraud. No one had the courage to do anything about it until things came to a breaking point last fall.
No, the 2010 election was run according to the Ukrainian constitution and Yanukovich emerged the winner. Lots of people/organizations certified the result. Maybe you're thinking of the 2004 election which the opposition claimed was fraudulent and was subsequently over turned by the so-called Orange Revolution.
My argument about the legitimacy of the interim government will play itself out if eastern Ukraine decides to secede from the west, because it provides them with the casus belli for the break. Then it becomes a question of whether divorce will be amicable or not, and whether the nationalists in the west decide to break away themselves.
I think it would make a good bordello.
He had “privatized” the place.
I did come across the convoluted history of ownership of the p(a)lace.
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