The Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Aksyonov is refusing from his the mandate. The mass media wrote that he has a Russian passport

Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Andriy Aksyonov prepares to give back the mandate early.

This was reported by Oleksiy Honcharenko, a member of the European Solidarity faction, and Yaroslav Zheleznyak, a lawmaker from Holos party, but they did not specify the reasons for Aksyonovʼs decision.

Zheleznyak noted that after the vote, a record low number of deputies will remain in the Verkhovna Rada — 415.

• In 2010, Andrii Aksyonov became the head of the village council of Novodonetske, near Dobropillya in the Donetsk region. He was a representative of the pro-Russian Party of Regions. In May 2014, he was accused of supporting a pseudo-referendum on the secession of a part of Donbas from Ukraine. In particular, in the center of Novodonetske, near the village council, there was a tent for collecting signatures. Aksyonov himself noted that preventing the holding of a referendum is the authority of the Security Service of Ukraine.
• In 2015, Aksyonov was elected mayor of Dobropillya. A few years later, the mass media reported that Aksyonov received a Russian passport in the annexed Crimea in 2014. The following year, he was charged with forgery of documents (Part 4 of Article 358) and embezzlement of property (Part 2, 3 of Article 191). Because of the court case, Aksyonov then left Ukraine, for which he was declared wanted.
• In the winter of 2019, he returned to Ukraine and immediately received a preventive measure in the form of night house arrest. He was also suspended for several months from the position of mayor of Dobropillya.
• During the 2019 parliamentary elections, he lost 1.5% of the vote and came second in the 50th district, and in the fall of 2020, he was re-elected to the post of mayor of Dobropillya in the local elections.
• In 2021, he was elected a lawmaker for the majority district No. 50 in the Donetsk region. He took the oath in the Verkhovna Rada to shouts “Shame!”.