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Mykola Tyshchenko, a scandalous lawmaker from President Volodymyr Zelensky's Servant of the People party, has been fired from the job of a deputy head of the party's parliamentary faction, according to a statement released by the party's spokeswoman Yulia Paliychuk on Jan. 26.
Earlier on Jan. 26, Davyd Arakhamia, head of the faction, publicly called for firing Tyshchenko from the job and for expelling him from the party and the faction.
"I see that not everyone understands what members of parliament must do during the war," Arakhamia said.
The statement was Arakhamia's reaction to Tyshchenko's ongoing trip to Thailand.
Eleven months into the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the country's embassy in Bangkok announced on Jan. 26 that Tyshchenko was going to meet with Thailand's Ukrainian community on the next day.
Under martial law, Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are banned from leaving the country during the war, except for cases when they obtain special permits from the government. Some Ukrainian state officials and businesspeople have routinely abused this system and bypassed the restrictions.
On Jan. 23, the National Security and Defense Council banned state officials from leaving Ukraine, except for business trips.
The ban was put in place after Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Symoneko was caught vacationing in Spain in December. He was fired following the scandal.
Tyshchenko’s reputation has been blemished by numerous scandals.
In July 2022, Tyshchenko was fired from the position of the party's chief in Zakarpattia Oblast. The party attributed Tyshchenko's dismissal to his bad reputation.
In 2020, his Velyur restaurant in Kyiv violated a COVID-19 lockdown, with many politicians frequenting it.
