Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and his entire goverment resigned on Tuesday in a bid to defuse Ukraine’s deadly crisis, giving in to months of pressure as parliament scrapped anti-protest laws that had infuriated the Opposition.
Azarov said he had taken a “personal decision” to resign to keep Ukraine together as a state, as parliament met in an emergency session to vote on reforms and amendments backed by President Viktor Yanukovych.
Parliament overwhelmingly voted to scrap anti-protest laws that sparked the current crisis when the ruling party pushed them through the Verkhovna Rada in a shambolic show-of-hands vote on January 16.
The dramatic twists in Ukraine’s two months of turmoil came as Russian President Vladimir Putin met with EU chiefs at a summit in Brussels expected to be dominated by the turmoil.
The European Union and United States cranked up pressure on Yanukovych to impose serious reforms to end a standoff that has turned parts of Kiev into a war zone patrolled by masked protesters and that has left three activists dead.
In a morning announcement that took the opposition by surprise, Azarov yielded to months of pressure from the opposition who made his resignation a key demand of protests based in Independence Square in Kiev.