The law must be approved by President Petro Poroshenko before it takes effect. © Provided by AFP The law must be approved by President Petro Poroshenko before it takes effect. |
Ukrainian
lawmakers on Thursday voted for a new public holiday on December 25 in a move
that they said would allow the country to distance itself from Russia, which
celebrates Orthodox Christmas in January.
Ukraine is
majority Orthodox and January 7 will remain a public holiday in the country
even though the Western Christmas day is now officially recognized.
Oleksandr
Turchynov, secretary of Ukraine's Security and Defense Council, said it was a
"historic" decision.
"(It)
will allow us to distance ourselves from Moscow's calendar and Russian imperial
standards," he said.
"Let
us liberate ourselves from Moscow's mental occupation and return to the family
of free peoples," Ukrainian parliament chairman Andriy Parubiy wrote in a
blog post after the vote, in which 238 deputies voted for the changes and eight
against.
The law,
which must be approved by President Petro Poroshenko before it takes effect,
removes a public holiday on May 2, breaking with the Soviet tradition of
marking International Workers' Day over two days.
As in the
majority of ex-Soviet nations, the festival is celebrated with a tree and
presents are handed out for New Year rather than Christmas.
Russia and
Ukraine have been locked in a bitter feud since Moscow seized the Black Sea
peninsula of Crimea in 2014.
The Kremlin
was then accused of fueling a separatist conflict in two other eastern regions
that has cost the lives of more than 10,000 people in over three years.
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