MP Maryana Bezuhla (Servant of the People) has been dismissed from the post of deputy head of the parliament committee on national security and defence, LB.ua has learnt from its members.
"She was recalled from her post. This is the decision of the committee," one of the MPs said.
At the same time, the MP refused to comment on the reasons for this decision.
Another committee member and Fatherland party MP, Vadym Ivchenko, confirmed Bezuhla's ousting. However, this decision is yet to be voted on in the session hall.
In a comment to LB.ua, Bezuhla said it is parliament's call to decide on the matter by voting at a session.
"This is not a decision. This is a recommendation for the hall. At the same time [the offer] was put forward by the chairman while I was away. Repression," Bezuhla said.
The MP added that she "will not give up and will not give in to blackmail".
Later on Facebook, she added that "everything was done in the most insidious way possible: the chairman of the committee put it to vote when I warned him that I would be late for the meeting, in my absence; and my colleagues voted."
Maryana Bezuhla and why they wanted to recall her
Maryana Bezuhla publicly criticised Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, which caused public outrage and criticism from her colleagues in parliament. However, they proposed to expel her from the committee even before that.
On 28 February 2023, Fedir Venislavskyy submitted a draft resolution to exclude Bezuhla from the committee. MP Venislavskyy said that Bezuhla provided her colleagues on the committee with "deliberately false information, which in itself contains signs of a criminal offence". He said that the MP "provided MPs - members of the committee on national security, defence and intelligence - with knowingly false information that she had personally run the wording of draft law 4210, prepared for the second reading, with the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Defence Ministry of Ukraine, as evidenced by the audio recording of the committee's meeting. At the same time, no documents were provided to the committee members to confirm this information." Bezuhla herself attributed this to pressure on her because of her initiative to expel pro-Russian MP Serhiy Lyovochkin from the committee.