Pushing forest clearance in the Carpathians into the uranium enrichment law is the ultimate con job of the Servants of the People — high-stakes bluffing

18 August the parliament will consider a legislative initiative that simplifies the construction of electric power and heat supply facilities: wind farms, solar power plants, gas piston stations, boilers, etc. What is hidden in the bill on the Eastern Mining and Processing Plant and what does it have to do with Servant of the People member Heorus?

In fact, at the bill level the parliament is duplicating those provisions that the government introduced this year with its experimental decree on implementing the plan of stability. The outcome of this new policy was a resonant conflict in Kyiv over the clearing of a forest belt in Teremky. Under the cover of building a heat network hundreds of trees were cut, among them centuries-old oaks, without any approvals. Prime Minister Serhiy Koretzky had to meet with activists on Sunday.

Now harmful environmental standards have been inserted into the bill, which was supposed to concern exclusively the Eastern Mining and Processing Plant (No. 15122). Amendments that have nothing to do with the plant were submitted to the transitional provisions of the legislative initiative by the head of the Energy Committee Andriy Gerus ('Servant of the People').

This is a violation of the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada, which the Constitution of Ukraine requires to be followed. And in seven years of the parliament this is not the first case. A year ago, when voting on the scandalous law that eliminated independence of anti-corruption bodies NABU and SAP, the situation was almost the same. Back then, amendments that sparked protests across the country to the bill on a completely different topic were submitted a few hours before voting by Maksym Buhazanskyi ('Servant of the People').