activities as the governing party of Ukraine, as well as to help it explain better its position on the Yulia Tymoshenko case", as explained by Robert Mack, a senior manager at Burson-Marsteller. In the October 2012 parliamentary elections the party won 72 seats and 30% of the votes under party-list proportional representation (falling from 34% in 2007 and 32% in 2006) and another 115 by winning 115 simple-majority constituencies (it had competed in 204 of the 225 constituencies); this sum gave them a total of 187 seats and 41,56% of the 450 seats in the Ukrainian Parliament. The party had lost about 2 million voters compared with the previous election. On 12 December 2012 the party formed a parliamentary faction of 210 deputies. On 31 December 2013 this faction was 204 votes strong. At least 18 Party of Regions deputies have criminal ties, according to Hennadiy Moskal, deputy head of Parliament's Committee on Organized Crime and Corruption. In June 2013, 148 people's deputies of Ukraine signed a letter to the Polish Sejm asking to recognize the Volhynian tragedy as a genocide (:uk:Звернення депутатів від Партії регіонів і КПУ до польського Сейму). A total of 119 of those parliamentarians were members of Party of Regions, while other 23 were from the Communist Party of Ukraine. Post-Yanukovych presidency Yanukovych impeachment From November 2013 until February 2014 Ukraine was gripped by a series of anti-government demonstrations, known as Euromaidan. Goals of Euromaidan were the impeachment of President Yanukovych and snap elections. Late January 2014 the party's symbol and activities were banned in the Chernivtsi, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. Although there was no legal basis for these bans since in Ukraine only a court can ban the activities of a political force. The Party of Regions faction in Zhytomyr announced its dissolution on 19 February 2014, in connection with the crisis of the preceding three months. On 22 February 2014, during the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, the Ukrainian parliament voted to impeach the honorary chairman of the party, Viktor Yanukovych, as President of Ukraine. Out of the 38 PoR deputies present, 36 voted in favor of ousting Yanukovych, while two did not take part in the vote. Simultaneously both Yanukovych and former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov fled to Russia. In a written statement the next day, the party denounced Yanukovych, stating they "strongly condemn the criminal orders that led to human victims, an empty state