{"id":16736,"date":"2021-02-01T23:56:52","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T23:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=157235"},"modified":"2021-02-01T23:56:52","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T23:56:52","slug":"ukraines-ruling-party-expels-u-s-sanctioned-lawmaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/01\/ukraines-ruling-party-expels-u-s-sanctioned-lawmaker\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine’s Ruling Party Expels U.S.-Sanctioned Lawmaker"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy\u2019s party has voted to expel a lawmaker after he was put under U.S. sanctions over alleged U.S. election interference.<\/p>\n

A majority of lawmakers from the Servant of the People party on February 1 voted to remove Oleksandr Dubinskiy from the ruling party\u2019s parliamentary faction.<\/p>\n

Deputy Olha Vasylevska-Smahliuk wrote on her Telegram channel that Dubinskiy was expelled in \u201cthe shortest meeting of the Servant of the People faction ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

The faction voted 198 to 29 to remove the controversial lawmaker from the party. Nineteen party members abstained.<\/p>\n

Dubinsky denies the election meddling allegations and in a statement after the decision condemned the party.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have seen the true face of political actors in both the president’s office and the Ukrainian parliament, and we are well aware that this is a manipulative result that was needed by specific people to receive specific political dividends and to solve their own problems,” he told the press.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The U.S. Treasury on January 11 sanctioned seven individuals and four entities, accusing them of U.S. election interference and involvement in a Russia-linked foreign-influence network associated with Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach. Among those blacklisted was Dubinskiy.<\/p>\n

Derkach, who was sanctioned separately in September, has been linked to efforts by then President Donald Trump’s allies to find compromising information on President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s request to Zelenskiy during a July 2019 call led the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach the former president for two crimes. Trump was eventually acquitted by the Senate in early 2020, but the case damaged his administration\u2019s relationship with Kyiv.<\/p>\n

Ukraine relies on Washington for support against Russia since Moscow illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n

In late January, Ukraine\u2019s presidential office said it had launched a criminal investigation into attempts to interfere in the November U.S. presidential election and would do everything in its power to bring to justice those who attempted to damage relations between Ukraine and the United States.<\/p>\n

With reporting by RFE\/RL’s Ukrainian Service and Reuters<\/h6>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy\u2019s party has voted to expel a lawmaker after he was put under U.S. sanctions over alleged U.S. election interference. A majority of lawmakers from\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,376],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16736"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16737,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16736\/revisions\/16737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}