MOSCOW, Jan 27 Against the backdrop of scandals erupting in Ukraine with trips of a number of officials abroad, the Ukrainian Pravda publication reported on Friday that the head of the Batkivshchyna party and its faction in the Verkhovna Rada, Yulia Tymoshenko, spent the beginning of 2023 in Dubai.
Earlier, the head of the Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, David Arakhamia, said that deputy Nikolai Tishchenko would be expelled from the political force after reports of his trip to Thailand, where the deputy intended to meet with «representatives of the Ukrainian community.» Against the backdrop of recent bans on the exit of officials from Ukraine, the story caused a resonance in the local media. On Thursday, Tishchenko, according to Ukrainian media, was expelled from the party. Deputy Prosecutor General Aleksey Simonenko was also fired after a scandal with a holiday in Spain.
«People's Deputy, leader of the Batkivshchyna party Yulia Tymoshenko spent the beginning of the new year in Dubai (UAE), this is stated in the investigation of the journalist of Ukrayinska Pravda Mikhail Tkach … The journalists managed to observe the rest of Tymoshenko and her husband on the private closed beach of the hotel January 5,» the newspaper writes. It is noted that, according to the sources of «Ukrainska Pravda», after Tymoshenko noticed attention to herself, five days later she returned to Kyiv.
Despite the fact that at the time of Timoshenko's visit to Dubai there was still no official ban on officials traveling abroad without an official purpose, according to Ukrainian media, Volodymyr Zelensky had previously urged officials to refuse to travel abroad.
According to the publication, Tymoshenko spent time in the villa of a five-star hotel on the artificial island of Palm Jumeirah, behaved carefully, using underground parking and avoiding popular places.
Also, according to Ukrainska Pravda, other deputies of the Verkhovna Rada, including Natalia Korolevskaya, Suto Mamoyan and Vadim Stolar, live or regularly spend time in Dubai.
This week, the Ukrainian authorities banned a number of officials and law enforcement officers from traveling abroad without an official purpose. According to the decree, the ban on leaving the country applies to ministers and their deputies, parliament deputies, heads of central authorities and deputies, head of the office of Volodymyr Zelensky and his deputies, heads of the Security Service of Ukraine, the National Bank and deputies, ombudsman and representatives, heads of other authorities and leaders structural divisions of state bodies. The ban also applies to judges, prosecutors and all officials who have a reservation from mobilization.