The politically motivated revenge – “New York Times” about the case against Poroshenko

The criminal proceedings against the fifth president of Ukraine, opposition leader Petro Poroshenko, are politically motivated revenge of Volodymyr Zelensky, who thus imitates Viktor Yanukovych.

This is stated in an article in the New York Times “Ukraine threatens to arrest the former president.”

The newspaper notes that the current government in Ukraine is threatening the arrest of former President Poroshenko, who heads the opposition faction in parliament.

“The Ukrainian police on Friday questioned Ukraine’s former president, Petro O. Poroshenko, after threatening to arrest him if he failed to appear, in what a growing chorus of critics including the European Union say is a politically motivated vendetta”, – the newspaper writes.

Political prosecutions have haunted Ukraine since independence. A former president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, in 2011 imprisoned the opponent he narrowly beat in a presidential race, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, and other opponents.

Mr. Poroshenko is not just a former president but also a prominent political opponent of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who won election last spring on an anti-corruption platform that included a pledge to end politically motivated investigations.

Since Mr. Zelensky became president, the police have questioned Mr. Poroshenko as a witness in 16 distinct criminal cases.

The publication also recalls that in a sworn affidavit, US Secretary of State George Kent told of a meeting of representatives of Zelensky’s team, including Andrei Ermak with US officials, during which Special Representative Kurt Walker warned them against political persecution of President Poroshenko “not a wise way forward for the country”.

However, after this conversation, the pressure on Poroshenko became even more sincere, and Andrei Ermak later headed the Office of President Zelensky – the newspaper writes.

One of the cases that accuses Poroshenko is the Minsk Agreements, the newspaper notes. The treason case relates to Mr. Poroshenko’s negotiation of a French- and German-brokered settlement agreement with Russia in 2015 called the Minsk II accord, which forced painful concessions on Ukraine. It is unclear, however, how any Ukrainian leader could have achieved a more favorable deal while Russian and separatist forces had surrounded thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in eastern Ukraine and a massacre seemed imminent, – summarizes the author of the article.

Mr. Poroshenko rejects the accusations categorically. “All the cases against me are purely political,”

“Doesn’t the government understand that such actions do not hurt me — because I am supported by people — but discredit the country as a whole and the legal system in particular?”, – Mr. Poroshenko said.

In a statement, Mr. Zelensky’s office denied any role in the investigations now underway related to Mr. Poroshenko. “The Office of the President does not have any influence on the law enforcement or judiciary system,” – the statement said.

But even critics of Mr. Poroshenko’s tenure as president have spoken out against the onslaught of investigations. “We can clearly see bias,” Maryna Lilichenko, a lawyer and human rights activist, said. “I don’t support either side in this affair, but everything indicates that this is political.”

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