MOSCOW, September 3. /TASS/. Vladimir Zelensky called Ukrainian lawmakers responsible for voting on European legislation and shouted at them to pass the laws required by the IMF, the Ukrainskaya Pravda media outlet said.
According to its sources, after Prime Minister Sergey Koretsky gave a briefing on the actual situation around the budget deficit, Zelensky immediately called Ukrainian lawmakers, shouting at them to force them to pass laws needed to obtain IMF funding. The media outlet noted that this situation looks strange, since Zelensky’s supporters in parliament who constitute the majority are formally responsible for everything going on in the Verkhovna Rada (parliament).
It compared Zelensky to a rider stuck in a bog who is spurring his horse in the hope that being more brutal will help him squeeze out at least a few final bursts of speed. "But the main problem is that he himself drove his horse into this bog," the UKrainskaya Pravda writes.
Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergey Marchenko said earlier that these bills need to be passed into laws before October to obtain Western assistance. The cabinet submitted relevant documents to parliament in late July. Prior to that, this tax initiative, in the format of amendments to another bill, was put for Rada voting in May but was not supported by lawmakers. The government said that it hoped to earn around 10 billion hryvnias ($225 million) a year from these taxes.
