Scandal-hit lawmaker Tyshchenko expelled from parliamentary faction

Scandal-hit lawmaker Mykola Tyshchenko has been expelled from the parliamentary faction of President Volodymyr Zelensky's Servant of the People party, the faction's spokeswoman Yuliia Paliichuk said on Jan. 27. The day before, Tyshchenko was fired from his job of a deputy head of the faction and excluded from the party itself over his trip to Thailand.

Ukraine's embassy in Bangkok announced on Jan. 26 that Tyshchenko was going to meet with Thailand's Ukrainian community the next day.

Tyshchenko wrote on Facebook that he is in Asia on a work trip, and "all senior officials are aware" of it. Ukrainian Parliament's Chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk denied that Tyshchenko had been posted abroad, adding that he didn't sign any corresponding orders.

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, after Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Symoneko had been caught vacationing in Spain in December.

Tyshchenko's reputation has been blemished by numerous scandals. In July 2022, he 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.