Lawyer Novikov at the Supreme Court: President Zelensky’s side deliberately disrupted the hearing

The authorities deliberately disrupted a Supreme Court hearing that was set to rule today on Poroshenko’s lawsuit against illegal sanctions. This was announced during the hearing, which was postponed due to the absence of the president’s representative.

This was stated by Poroshenko’s lawyer Ilya Novikov.

“Today, January 5th, was supposed to be the final hearing in this trial. We’ve almost reached the end of the final volume. Since we’re using a simplified procedure, we’re not even holding formal debates. Most likely, according to plan, if everything had gone as planned, as it should by law, we would have heard our brief speeches, our opponents’, and the court would have gone into deliberation,” Novikov noted.

“Zelenskyy is already officially talking about his plans for the upcoming elections. When we hear that the President of Ukraine, who has a multi-billion-dollar budget for his office and as many lawyers as he wants, cannot appear at the trial to invalidate the decree by which he removed his predecessor and main systemic opponent, Novikov, from the election campaign, Poroshenko,” he considers this to be open sabotage.

“We conclude that President Zelenskyy deliberately avoided and deliberately disrupted this hearing. Moreover, depending on whether they are able to expedite their election preparation plans, we cannot rule out that the January 30 hearing, which the court announced today, will also be disrupted,” the lawyer says.

“I remind you that delaying the proceedings was our opponents’ primary tactic from the start. The key document, a disk containing files allegedly discussed on February 12th—the draft of this sanctions decision at the National Security and Defense Council meeting—was supposed to be available to us back in May. The court received it in October, and it turned out the disk had been recorded, the files had been written to it, on February 13th. In other words, it was a complete forgery, concealed from the court for six months. This is no longer working. We already have all the necessary evidence in the case. And now they’ve devolved into simple sabotage,” Novikov notes.

“President Zelenskyy used this trick to buy himself three weeks to figure out what to do with Poroshenko in these elections. A draft law, allegedly prepared by the Central Electoral Commission, is currently circulating, which would simply ban anyone under sanctions from participating in the elections. We’re still at a point where such shameful scenarios, absolutely disastrous ones, are possible – disgrace yourself but buy yourself three weeks to decide on the elections. Nevertheless, the president considers this an acceptable option and is going with it. If we’re to sum up this meeting, it’s a dismal outcome,” Ilya Novikov concludes.

A representative of President Zelenskyy failed to appear at the meeting of the Panel of Judges of the Cassation Administrative Court of the Supreme Court, where the hearing of Petro Poroshenko’s claim to overturn the illegal decree imposing sanctions is ongoing.

It was previously revealed during the case’s consideration that some of the documents on the basis of which the sanctions were imposed were submitted to the National Security and Defense Council retroactively after the decision had been made and the Decree had been signed.

Poroshenko’s lawyers have added documents to the case file proving the identical wording in publications about Poroshenko on resources linked to Portnov, in the corresponding petition , which did not receive the necessary votes, and in the justification for sanctions in President Zelenskyy’s decree.

The court also included in the case file the ECHR’s decision of October 16, 2025, in which the European Court of Human Rights found that sanctioned persons in Ukraine lacked sufficient opportunity to protect their rights and due procedural guarantees against arbitrariness during judicial review of the decision to impose sanctions.

At previous Supreme Court hearings, evidence of falsified sanctions against Poroshenko was examined. Poroshenko’s lawyers showed a film produced by the 1+1 television channel in which Zelenskyy directly admitted that the National Security and Defense Council is his weapon and that he uses it because it’s more effective than following the law.

Authorities stated in a closed court hearing that sanctions against Poroshenko were imposed for educational purposes.

Earlier, President Zelenskyy’s representative to the Supreme Court acknowledged that changes were made to the signed decree implementing the National Security and Defense Council’s decision on sanctions against Poroshenko, which she called “technical amendments.”

President Zelenskyy’s spokesperson also confirmed earlier during the meeting that the National Bank of Ukraine illegally imposed financial restrictions on Petro Poroshenko.

The next hearing is scheduled for January 30, but Poroshenko’s lawyers predict that the authorities will also try to postpone it.