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Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko leaving the podium after lashing out at President Viktor Yanukovych in an address to the parliament in Kiev on Wednesday. Lawmakers dissolved her government, giving Yanukovych the difficult task of stitching together a new ruling coalition.
KIEV — Ukraine's parliament dismissed the government of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Wednesday, giving President Viktor Yanukovych the difficult task of stitching together a new ruling coalition.
Yanukovych met with all parliamentary faction leaders, except Tymoshenko's, shortly after the vote and urged them to quickly agree on terms.
"The [coalition] talks are not simple, but I think they will be finalized in the coming days," Mykola Azarov, a close ally of Yanukovych and a likely candidate for the post of prime minister, told reporters after the vote.
Deputies passed a motion of no confidence in Tymoshenko's administration, with 243 out of 450 voting in favor.
Yanukovych's Party of the Regions will now seek to form its own coalition within 30 days and a government within another 60, or face a snap parliamentary election.
Local media said Tymoshenko, instead of staying on in a caretaker role, would take a vacation and hand the reins to her deputy, Oleksander Turchynov. Justice Minister Mykola Onyshuk told Ukrainian television that it was "a possibility."
Tymoshenko has refused to recognize Yanukovych's presidential victory on Feb. 7.
"This person, Yanukovych, presents a threat to [Ukrainian] independence, a threat to its territorial integrity, to democracy and freedom of speech," Tymoshenko told the parliament Wednesday.
Yanukovych's party is the biggest bloc in the chamber with 171 seats but is well short of the required 226 majority.
Seven of Tymoshenko's 153-member bloc voted to dismiss the government, alongside 15 of 71 members of former President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc.
Besides Azarov, Yanukovych has named reformist former Central Bank chairman Sergei Tigipko and former Finance Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk as possible prime ministers.
Gleb Vyshlynsky, an analyst at GfK Ukraine, said a meeting of minds was likely between Yanukovych's party and Our Ukraine, which both want to avoid a potentially costly snap election.
"There is a 70 percent chance that they will manage [to form a government] in the coming week or two," he said.
The CEO of Naftogaz, Ukraine's national oil and gas company, has resigned, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Oleh Dubyna had headed Naftogaz since December 2007, when Tymoshenko's government came to power.
