Iryna Herashchenko called on parliamentarians to adopt a bill on ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men during military service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (bill No. 6109) and a bill allowing to release payments to families of political prisoners (bill No. 9026)
This call was out with on September 3 at a sitting of the Conciliation Board where the First Deputy Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Iryna Herashchenko impelled the audience to pass the above bills as soon as possible.
On parage in the military
The First Vice-Speaker reminded that on August 24 Ukrainians had witnessed the revival of the Ukrainian army during a parade on the Independence Day of Ukraine. The politician noted that among the marching soldiers of the central column in Kyiv there had also been women - students of military educational institutions, who did aspire to be on a par with men in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations, to defend Ukraine from an armed aggression of the Russian Federation.
Iryna Herashchenko proposed to support the women’s desire by passing the bill No. 6109 with the greatest possible dispatch.
On RU-UA friendship treaty
During the speech, the politician also commented on the statements regarding the denunciation of the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, which Russia had violated de facto by seizing the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, and sending armed units to the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts for war-fighting.
Iryna Herashchenko urged not to manipulate information and stressed that the definitions of "non-prolongation" and "denunciation" do have a day and night difference.
“There is no talk about denouncing the Treaty, in as much as we shall demand from the Russian Federation, in all international courts, to bear responsibility for the aggression against Ukraine and, in particular, for the violation of this document," underlined I. Herashchenko.
It was also said that after passing the law of Ukraine on peculiarities of the state sovereignty policy in the temporarily occupied lands the President of Ukraine commissioned the foreign ministry to make some treaty termination proposals, which means, according to the Presidential envoy on a peaceful settlement of the Donetsk-Luhansk clash Iryna Herashchenko, in no way the same as a denunciation process.
"In 2014, Russia violated the terms of the Treaty and should be responsible for the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula, occupation of the Donbas and thousands of murders of military and civilian citizens of Ukraine," the politician noted, adding that "at the same time, it is obvious that the continuation of this Treaty is seen to be impossible".
Money to prisoners’ families
The representative of the TCG’s humanitarian subgroup Iryna Herashchenko thanked all parliamentarians, government officials and volunteers who support families of the Kremlin’s hostages and political prisoners.
She called on to settle the issue governmentally and spread then the information that Ukraine’s state budget had assigned in 2018 some UAH 96.7 million for the line ministry (the Ministry of Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons of Ukraine) to finance provision and protection of rights and interests of persons deprived of their personal liberty (and their families) through actions of Russia-backed illegal armed groups or Russian authorities throughout CADR and CALR (certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions) that are temporarily uncontrolled by Ukraine at present. At the same time, according to the politician, there are currently some gaps in the laws governing the use of the allocated funds.
To resolve the gap-in-law problem, I.Herashchenko called on to take as soon as possible a ‘technical’ bill tasked to amend the 2018 state budget document - which, in turn, would then enable de-blocking payments to families of political prisoners.
The politician stressed that the implementation of the law (the above tech bill) does not require additional expenditures from the State Budget of Ukraine.