Ukraine’s biggest party to ask for no confidence vote on Tuesday

The Verkhovnaya Rada (Ukrainian parliament) is expected to hold a no-confidence vote on Tuesday, as the motion has already been submitted.

The country’s lawmakers have been gathering signatures necessary to call for a no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk during a Tuesday afternoon session of Ukraine’s parliament. Aivaras Abromavicius resigned on February 3 as the economy minister and said he and his team received pushback on their reform efforts from government leaders including members of President Petro Poroshenko’s party.

Yatsenyuk’s coalition party, the People’s Front, has plunged in popularity from being the second-largest in Ukraine, behind Poroshenko’s Social Democratic Party, to just 1 percent in the polls.

Kiev has been waiting since October for the next tranche of aid, worth $1.7 billion, which has been held up by concerns over the slow pace of reform.

Last week, US Vice President Joe Biden urged the governing coalition in Ukraine to quickly establish unity to allow the country to “move forward with reforms, in line with the commitments in the International Monetary Fund program”.

Poroshenko heads Ukraine’s largest party, and Yatseniuk the next largest.

If the government collapsed, it would dismay Ukraine’s global backers, who have invested much cash and political capital supporting the government in its standoff with Moscow after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

“Today I’ve had a deep conversation with Prosecutor General and offered him to write a resignation letter”, Poroshenko said in a statement on his official website.

The resignations, if they come, could further destabilize Ukraine.

Vitaly Kasko resigned on Monday as general prosecutor and accused the Poroshenko-appointed general prosecutor Viktor Shokin of derailing anti-graft cases.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk speaks during the annual report in Parliament in Kiev, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2016.