The People's Self-Defense public movement is planning to quit the Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense bloc (OUPU).

Oleh Novykov, the deputy head of People's Self-Defense, announced this at the movement eighth congress.

"We have fulfilled all our obligations before Our Ukraine as of today, and we will now go our own way," he said.

According to Parliamentary Deputy Kateryna Lukianova of the Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense bloc, who is a member of People's Self-Defense, the movement believes that it has the right to quit the parliamentary faction of the Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense bloc, but it does not want anyone to say tomorrow that it did not fulfill the conditions of its agreement with Our Ukraine.

The issue of quitting the parliamentary faction was not put to a vote.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Forward Ukraine! party recently decided to rename itself as the People's Self-Defense party.

In July 2007, the Our Ukraine People's Union party, the Forward Ukraine! party, the Narodnyi Rukh of Ukraine party, the Ukrainian People's Party, Ukrainian Republican Party Sobor, the Christian Democratic Union, the European People's Party, the Pora party, the Party of Defenders of the Fatherland, and the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists agreed to create a union of democratic forces for contesting 2007's early parliamentary elections.

The leader of People's Self-Defense, Yurii Lutsenko, signed the relevant declaration on behalf of the Forward Ukraine! party.