Ukraine Ukrainian ex-president Petro Poroshenko was charged with treason in Kiev

Ukraine to the former president Petro Poroshenko were charged in Kiev on Monday with charges of treason and support for terrorism. Prosecutors demanded the ex-president be detained or arrested for two months in the evening. According to prosecutors, the billionaire could be released for free against a bail of one billion hryvnia, or about 31 million euros.

At half past eight in the evening, the judge was still considering his decision. Meanwhile, soldiers from the National Guard of Ukraine set out to evict protesters in support of Poroshenko in front of the courthouse in Kiev.

Poroshenko returned to Kiev on Monday morning from a month-long trip abroad, during which he has been living mainly in Poland. The former president hurried from the airport directly to the courtroom and at the same time staged an actual public play for the day.

Petro Poroshenko, a 56-year-old current MP, left Ukraine exactly a month ago, three days before he was due to be charged with heavy charges of treason in a Kiev court. The trial was adjourned to Monday due to the accused’s absence.

The trial has been considered political, and the state news agency, for example Unian wrote the word “crime case” on Monday consistently in quotation marks. External observers have been amazed at the domestic political wars at a time when movements of Russian troops are pointing to the threat of a real great war.

Poroshenko arrived at Kiev’s old Zhuljany Airport from Warsaw on Monday morning, an hour and a half before the trial began. The airport is also used by business planes, but Poroshenko arrived on the scheduled flight of the Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air.

The value of Poroshenko’s assets is $ 1.6 billion in the Forbes magazine’s billionaire listing. The flight ticket cost him PLN 179, or about EUR 40.

The trips of a politician and a businessman abroad will continue to be limited, even if the court does not order the accused to be imprisoned or placed under house arrest. According to Poroshenko, his passports were confiscated at the airport by the border authorities. To the thousands of supporters waiting in the field, the ex-president said he was the victim of a political chase.

AM In the commencement of the trial, the defense demanded a state lawyer for the accused, although the accused himself did not want one. The State Investigation Authority of Ukraine stated that no free trial has been granted so far.

Poroshenko’s lawyers based their defense on the allegation that the trial was illegal. According to the Constitution, a sitting MP can only be prosecuted by the public prosecutor.

The accused himself seemed to be speaking in the courtroom more to the public than to the judges.

“Your speeches are endless, pull less drugs,” Poroshenko said, according to news agency Unian, without specifying who he accused of drug abuse.

Particularly the charges against Poroshenko cannot be considered apolitical. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi has been accusing its predecessor, called the “Chocolate King,” and owner of the Rošen confectionery giant, of illustrious transactions since its winning 2019 election campaign.

After winning the 2014 election, Poroshenko transferred his shares in Rosen to a so-called “blind trust” fund, to which he has had no say. However, the ex-president has other assets through his investment company, some of them in tax havens, according to so-called Panama papers.

The charges, which came to light in December, concern Poroshenko’s alleged coal trades worth a few tens of millions of dollars at the beginning of his presidency in the next 2014-2015 war in eastern Ukraine. According to the charges, the ex-president would have bought a pro-Russian oligarch together Viktor Medvedchuk with the Donbass coal separatists and brought it through Russia to Ukraine.

A president sitting in this way would have allegedly supported Russia’s terrorist regime in eastern Ukraine. Medvedchuk was already under investigation and under house arrest in the spring.

Poroshenko gave an online interview last week in Brussels Politicolle. In it, he claimed the charges were that of a billionaire who was considered a supporter of Zelensky Ihor Kolomoiskyin revenge operation.

From 2014 to 2015, Kolomoiskyi served as governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region and practically armed his own army to defend the region’s eastern border against separatists in the Donetsk region. He quarreled with Poroshenko over disagreements over the use of armed forces and had to resign after a year of laundering.

Zelensky made a person of publicity Servant of the people TV series was shown on a TV channel owned by Kolomoisky.

Poroshenko has owned two television channels, Prjamoi and Kanava 5, which became popular during the so – called Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004.

Poroshenko announced in November that she would give up the channels after Zelenskyi was allowed to run through her so-called oligarchic law. The law provides for the establishment of a register of money launderers whose membership in political life is severely restricted.

Zelenskyi has remained number one in the presidential polls during the first half of his reign and seems to have halted the decline in his support for the time being. Poroshenko, on the other hand, is second to recent support measures.