Ukrainian opposition demands parliament speaker's resignation over pro-Hitler remarks

The Opposition Bloc faction in Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has demanded public condemnation of speaker Andrei Parubiy’s remarks calling Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler "the torchbearer of democracy" and insists on his voluntary resignation, the party’s leader Yuri Boiko said speaking in parliament on Thursday.

"We insist on the public condemnation of the statement by the Verkhovna Rada speaker and asked all diplomatic missions, all governments not only to take note of it but also to publicly condemn the Ukrainian speaker’s remarks," he said.

"If the speaker does not step down voluntarily, our faction reserves the right to appeal to parliaments all across the globe with full explanations on that deplorable incident," Boiko said, going on to further condemn this ‘disgraceful comment’ by such a high-ranking official. "The Opposition Bloc has registered a draft resolution on dismissing Parubiy from his post, and I call for putting that document to a vote," he declared.

The party stressed in its statement that its representatives would familiarize the delegates from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) with the text of Parubiy’s remark "in order to formulate a common position and condemn any attempts to revive Nazism in Ukraine."

In his appearance on the Freedom of Speech evening program broadcast by the ICTV channel, Parubiy described Adolf Hitler as a true proponent of democracy claiming that the Nazi tyrant "practiced direct democracy in the 1930s." "We need to remember that," the speaker asserted.

The speaker’s shocking remarks sparked outrage among the public. Vadim Rabinovich, leader of the For Life political party, earlier said he would file a lawsuit against Parubiy for Nazi propaganda. For his part, Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of the Ukrainian Choice social movement, said that the speaker must step down after making such statements.