UKRAINIAN Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin “resigned” yesterday — as the parliament in Kiev voted to sack him.

In a striking display of doublespeak, the website of the Verkhovna Rada said that Mr Shokin had quit after 289 of 450 members voted to sack him for going after the wrong people.

Economic Development Minister Aivaras Abromavicius tweeted: “Hallelujah! Finally!” on the news of Mr Shokin’s sacking.

The vote came just an hour after the prosecutor had dismissed his deputy David Sakvarelidze for “grave violation of prosecutorial ethics.”

Mr Sakvarelidze was on the team of former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, a fugitive from justice in his own country who is now governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region.

Neonazis burned down the Odessa Trades Union House and killed 46 anti-fascists in January 2014, during the Maiden coup against then president Victor Yanukovych.

Mr Sakvarelidze had accused Mr Shokin, who was appointed in February last year, of having links to corrupt officials and MPs.

On Monday, some 500 people protested outside the Verkhovna Rada to demand the prosecutor’s dismissal.

That followed a court’s decision clearing Mr Shokin to probe NGO the Anti-Corruption Action Centre, one of his fiercest critics, over claims that it embezzled £1.5 million in aid money.

President Petro Poroshenko had called on Mr Shokin to resign last month, just as Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk narrowly survived a no confidence vote in a power struggle between rival right-wing factions.

A second vote to oust Mr Yatsenyuk was expected to be debated later yesterday.