A lawmaker in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s ruling Servant of the People party has apologized for browsing the profiles of women who offer sexual services for money and chatting with them on dating sites during a plenary parliamentary session.
In a Facebook post on October 30, Bohdan Yaremenko, who is married with a son and daughter, said he exercised poor judgment and that he deleted a previous post where he said pictures and video footage of him using dating applications on his mobile phone were "fabricated."
"Not all decisions are equally successful," Yaremenko, 48, said. "I want to apologize to all whom I’ve caused problems with my ill-advised actions: from my wife to the [parliamentary] faction and the president."
Images appeared online on October 30 showing the lawmaker browsing profiles of women on the Mamba and Loveeto dating sites.
During a voting session, Yaremenko was shown reading the profile of a 32-year-old woman who had outlined conditions for a paid-for tryst.
Later, he starts chatting with a woman asking about the parameters for a meeting. In response, the woman names a dollar amount per hour for having sexual intercourse.
Later on the same day, Yaremenko, who heads parliament’s foreign policy and inter-parliamentary cooperation committee, was shown browsing Tinder, another dating site.
A former diplomat, Yaremenko was dismissed as the consul-general in Turkey in late 2013 after he criticized the actions of riot police for using excessive force to disperse a group of protesters on November 30, 2013 in what was the first day of the pro-democratic Maidan movement.
