Ukraine PM Yatsenyuk resigns after ruling coalition collapses

Arseniy Yatsenyuk (pictured above) resigned as Ukraine’s Prime Minister after the governing coalition collapsed on Thursday. He made the announcement after apparently being frozen out of a plot to hold early elections in the autumn. Al Jazeera said that the prime minister has been “badly frustrated” for weeks for the parliament’s “inability” to make amendments on a new budget.

The coalition has fallen apart, laws haven’t been voted on, soldiers can’t be paid, there’s no money to buy rifles, there’s no possibility to store up fuel. What options do we have now?

Arseniy Yatsenyuk

Although Ukrainians elected the president, Petro Poroshenko in May, there have yet to be new parliamentary elections since the former president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled. Yatsenyuk is likely to stay on in a caretaker role before a new poll. Following his resignation statement, Ukraine’s parliament registered a bill scheduling early parliamentary elections to be held on September 28. The government is struggling to defeat an insurgency by pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country, where a Malaysia Airlines jet was downed last Thursday.

Europe