Hopefully, this will be the final Ukraine post for a long time!

Anyway, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine yesterday approved Mykola Azarov as Prime Minister by 242 votes of the 343 deputies that voted in the 450-seat parliament. It then went on to approve the Cabinet of Ministers. Unian provides the full list of government ministers here.

It is unclear to me whether the approval was ratified under the usual constitutional mechanism (i.e by faction) or under the amended rules of procedure (i.e by faction and individual). (See previous post). However, my belief is that it was achieved in accordance with the constitutional mechanism. This is because Unian also reports that prior to the vote on Azarov as Prime Minister the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Volodymyr Lytvyn, announced the creation of a coalition comprising the Party of Regions faction, the Communist Party and the Lytvyn’s Bloc totalling 235 deputies. I have no information yet about the party affiliation of the government ministers.