After weeks of protest from small and medium-level business owners, including mass demonstrations and a tent camp on Maidan Nezalezhnosti [Independence Square] in Kyiv, President Yanukovych has announced that he is vetoing the new Tax Code. He is extremely vague as to which demands must be fulfilled by Thursday for him to then sign it.

He made the announced at the airport on his way to the OSCE Summit in Astana [Kazakhstan].  He said that the government had created a working group on revising the Tax Code, and amendments to the document might be tabled in parliament as early as Thursday.  The working group, he said, included representatives of the President and small and middle level businesses.

“Today and tomorrow the group will make amendments to the Tax Code which I will review on Thursday. If they meet the demands before the Tax Code, I will sign them and send them to Parliament.”