Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko speaks to reporters in Kyiv, 18 March 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/MIGUEL A. LOPES
Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council has imposed sanctions on the country’s former president Petro Poroshenko, Forbes Ukraine reported on Wednesday.
One source told Forbes that Poroshenko could be charged with “high treason”, while RBC Ukraine said that he had been targeted in a raft of sanctions aimed at those “formerly referred to as oligarchs”. No details on the specific sanctions imposed on Poroshenko have yet been made public.
Saying that the news had come as no surprise, Poroshenko on Wednesday called his sanctioning a “provocation” carried out on the orders of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Accusing Zelensky of looking for someone “to take responsibility for his tragic mistakes”, “blaming his Western partners”, and ordering “combat commanders to be thrown in jail”, Poroshenko said that there was “no way Poroshenko wouldn’t be blamed too”.
Poroshenko added that during a recent business trip abroad, “everyone warned me that the authorities had lost their minds … and it would be better to stay outside the country”.
In his nightly video address to the nation on Wednesday, Zelensky said that “everyone who jeopardised our national security and helped Russia must be held accountable. The billions earned by selling off Ukraine, Ukrainian interests and Ukrainian security should be frozen and should work to protect Ukraine and its people. And they definitely will be.”
Poroshenko, who founded one of Ukraine’s largest confectionery companies Roshen, served as president from 2014 to 2019, but was denied a second term after being beaten in the second round of the 2019 presidential election by popular actor and political neophyte Voldymyr Zelensky.
Since then, Poroshenko has been the target of numerous allegations, including tax evasion, and was accused of treason in 2021 for his alleged involvement in the sale of coal to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, in a case that Poroshenko said was fabricated by Zelensky.
While Zelensky’s term expired in 2024, the Ukrainian Constitution provides for the president to remain in office as long as the country is under martial law, as it has been since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
