The former Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko has been put under formal investigation for high treason on Monday after Ukrainian authorities accused him of links to financing separatist forces in the eastern Donbass region and business dealings tied to separatist-controlled areas.
The National Bureau of Investigation has accused Poroshenko, who served as president from 2014 – 2019, of committing treason and supporting terrorist organizations in reference to the pro-Russian separatists in the breakaway provinces.
Poroshenko has allegedly helped Luhansk and Donetsk’s separatists to sell around $55 million worth of coal to Kyiv while he served as president. He faces up to 15 years in prison and his property appropriated if convicted.
The bureau allegedly couldn’t summon Poroshenko for questioning in person since, according to his party, the former president had left Ukraine for a planned trip.
The accusations against Poroshenko are related to similar charges brought in October against pro-Russian lawmaker Viktor Medvedchuk. Medvedchuk, who has been under house arrest for about six months, is accused of colluding with officials during Poroshenko’s administration to buy coal from mines in Luhansk and Donetsk in 2014-2015 to finance the separatists and to block coal purchases from the international market.
Both Medvedchuk’s and Poroshenko’s political parties denied any wrongdoing, calling those accusations a smokescreen to divert attention from the wrongdoings of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s own government.
Ukrainian authorities have been harassing Poroshenko, raising dozens of investigations against him, since Zelenskiy took office in May 2019, although several European and Transatlantic partners of Ukraine have raised concerns of charges against Poroshenko.
According to Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party and his lawyers, the latest development illustrates the “selective justice” in Ukraine as described by the West.
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