Ukrainian parliament dismisses Solskyi as agriculture minister
The Verkhovna Rada has dismissed Mykola Solskyi as Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine.
Yaroslav Zhelezniak, an MP from the Holos Party, announced this on the messaging app Telegram, Ukrinform reports.
He specified that 273 lawmakers had voted for such a decision.
European Solidarity MP Oleksii Honcharenko, in turn, wrote on Telegram that the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Agrarian Policy had not supported Solskyi's resignation, but proposed deciding on this issue in the hall.
Ukraine's High Anti-Corruption Court selected a measure of restraint for Solskyi in the form of arrest with the possibility of putting up UAH 75 million bail.
On April 23, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) announced that law enforcement officers charged the incumbent minister with taking over state land worth UAH 291 million and attempting to take over land worth UAH 190 million.
Solskyi, commenting on a suspicion notice handed to him, said that the events referred to the period of 2017-2018, when he was neither the minister for agrarian policy and food nor the head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Agrarian and Land Policy.
According to him, the seven-year-old circumstances relate to a dispute between state-owned enterprises and individuals, particularly Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) soldiers, over plots of land that were granted to the latter in accordance with the law.
It emerged on April 26 that full bail had been posted for Solskyi.
Photo: Yaroslav Zhelezniak/Telegram