Ukrainian former president Poroshenko suspected of treason | Abroad

According to Ukrainian media, the former president could face 15 years in prison for financing terrorism, treason and facilitating the activities of a terrorist organization.

Poroshenko is said to have used public money to buy coal in a roundabout way from mines in the area controlled by Russian-backed separatists, against which his own army was fighting a war.

torn

Ukraine’s industrial heart was shattered by that war in 2014. Many of the power plants on the Ukrainian frontline are geared to the specific kind of coal that is mainly excavated in separatist territory. A shortage of that would explain the deals.

The former president is currently leader of his political party European Solidarity and is consistently second behind incumbent President Volodimir Zelensky in polls. It is not Zelensky’s first political competitor to criticize justice: the leader of the pro-Russian ‘For Life’ party, Viktor Medvechuk, was also charged with treason last spring.

On the political stage, the two were out to kill each other. As president, Poroshenko advocated a nationalist course: often in army clothes, the commander-in-chief argued for one ‘army, language and faith’.

Under one hat

But from the tapes of the Ukrainian security services, in which an anti-corruption group gave insight into a slick YouTube series last summer, it appears that the two were in cahoots. Medvetchuk used his line to the Kremlin and met with Poroshenko to arrange coal deals.

Ukraine has a fraught history of persecuting opponents of the president. Pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko for years for abuse of power in a gas deal with Russia. According to the EU, the persecution was politically motivated.

Yanukovych was ousted by a popular uprising in February 2014. Three months later, Poroshenko was elected president.

Pain point

The separation of the judiciary and executive powers, the judge and the president, is a sore point in the reforms that the EU and the IMF are demanding in return for their support since the start of the war in eastern Ukraine.

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