Petro Poroshenko may soon find himself in the dock and receive a real sentence. He is suspected of financing terrorist organizations and high treason, which in wartime conditions are serious crimes and carry capital punishment.
The accusation under these articles of the fifth president, and the current people's deputy, could become an event of colossal proportions. Let's figure out whether the current government will risk imprisoning Poroshenko the way Viktor Yanukovych once did with Yulia Tymoshenko
The day before, information appeared in the Ukrainian media that the State Bureau of Investigation had completed a pre-trial investigation into the so-called “coal case” of Petro Poroshenko and Viktor Medvedchuk.
It was also noted that access to the investigation materials has already been opened to the ex-president’s lawyers. After the defense side gets acquainted with them, the SBI must send the indictment to the court. In this case, Poroshenko will change his status and become a suspect.
Ilya Novikov, Poroshenko’s lawyer, calls on the media not to create “sensation from scratch.” According to him, the official response of the State Bureau of Investigation to the request from the publication “Glavkom” actually means that “nothing is happening here now, distance from us, please.”
Novikov assures that the pre-trial investigation of the “coal case” was completed in September 2022. Then the SBI approached the lawyers of the fifth president and offered to familiarize themselves with the materials. “We told them that they did not have the right to close the investigation until all our petitions were considered, of which there were quite a few at that time, and all of them demanded a meaningful answer. That’s it, nothing else happened in the last year and a half, and in February 2024 there was no news in the case either,” states Novikov.
He once again emphasized that in fact there is no news in the published information. Like, “it was a drill, we can leave,” no one is preparing any changes, and “Poroshenko is doing fine and will continue to do so, but thank you for your attention.”
What is Poroshenko accused of?
In the spring of 2021, the “Medvedchuk tapes” were published online - 30 hours of recordings of telephone conversations that pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk conducted with Kremlin officials and functionaries of terrorist groups during 2014-2017. The conversations concerned the purchase of coal from the uncontrolled territory of Donbass for Ukrainian thermal power plants. Medvedchuk has repeatedly noted that he coordinates all issues with the “chief,” apparently referring specifically to then-President Poroshenko.
Already in December of the same year, following Medvedchuk, suspicion was announced to the former guarantor. The investigation stated that Poroshenko, Medvedchuk, as well as ex-Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Vladimir Demchishin and businessman Sergei Kuzyara organized the purchase of coal from state mines in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, precisely when these enterprises were actually under the control of Russian mercenaries and terrorist groups “ DPR" and "LPR". As law enforcement officials reported, Ukraine paid more than UAH 205 million to the accounts of Luhansk Coal and the Kiselev Mine. More than 3.1 billion UAH were paid in cash.
In general, the investigation came to the following conclusion: Poroshenko, Medvedchuk, Demchishin and Kuzyara and other persons unidentified by the investigation “through deliberate actions assisted the activities of the terrorist organizations “L/DPR” (...), making the energy sector of Ukraine dependent on Russia and the terrorist organizations “L/DPR” DPR”, thereby undermining the economic security of the state, depriving it of opportunities to diversify sources of energy supply.”
Poroshenko himself already at the beginning of 2022 called the “coal case” against himself a “staged show” and stated that he did not carry out any transactions with coal supplies from ORDLO. This was done, as he noted, by the government in force at that time without violating the law.
“Ask yourself a question: was there a violation of the law there? You will find the answer is no. Is it possible to buy coal there? It's possible, it's possible. Did this give work to Ukrainians who lived in the occupied territories? It did. If you hadn’t given this job, they would have taken weapons and gone to kill Ukrainians. This is so,” Poroshenko said.
He also noted that coal was imported not from the occupied territory, but from state mines registered in the controlled territory of Ukraine, which paid taxes to the state budget of Ukraine. According to the logic of law enforcement officers, as Poroshenko added, the payment of pensions to pensioners in the occupied territory can also be called terrorism.
Poroshenko for the OP: does not pose a threat, but remains a destabilizing factor
Director of the Center for Research on Civil Society Problems Vitaly Kulik, in a commentary to Regionews, notes that signs of possible crimes announced by the investigation are still visible. Therefore, the process of establishing the truth must be transparent and public. At the same time, he doubts that it is now necessary to bring this matter to Poroshenko’s imprisonment.
“As for Poroshenko’s direct criminal liability, the question is whether this is necessary right now, during martial law, in a situation when the country needs political unity. Poroshenko himself will not run away from justice. It is unlikely that he will be a political emigrant, even if suspicion is brought against him,” says Kulik.
He adds that there is a high probability that Poroshenko’s case will be used to “hang him on a hook” as a possible competitor to the current government.
“We understand that Poroshenko’s ratings are already far behind and he does not pose any serious electoral threat to the current government. But it may well be considered a factor of constant instability. Therefore, in order to “hang” Poroshenko, most likely, with these cases they will try to make him capable of contracting, or so that he understands what he is doing, in the context of a possible suspicion and detention. After all, Poroshenko is being charged with high treason, and this is not about posting bail, but solely about staying in a pre-trial detention center,” says the expert.
Kulik still does not exclude the possibility that the former president may be suspected and detained. “But will this create a situation of lowering Poroshenko’s rating and discrediting him, as they think about it at Bankova? No. Moreover, even those people who are disappointed in the ex-president will return to him, because they will believe that his case is political persecution,” Kulik sums up.
At the same time, one cannot help but notice the fact that the “Poroshenko-Medvedchuk case” was raised precisely against the background of the planned resignation of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny. It can be assumed that they are trying to use the “stuffing” of this case onto the national agenda to shift the emphasis, reduce and blur the degree of tension in society, which undoubtedly provokes rumors about the dismissal of the commander in chief.
The president’s office will also not give up the opportunity to use the “coal case” to send a clear signal to the entire team of the fifth president, which does not lose a single chance to “prick” Zelensky and in the future is considering the possibility of entering into a serious political confrontation with the current government. They say that “European Solidarity” will have to think several times before entering the game. Poroshenko’s team itself, judging by their comments, treats the situation very lightly and does not take into account the fact that at one time no one believed in the imprisonment of Yulia Tymoshenko.
In any case, the possible arrest of Poroshenko will entail serious problems, primarily with international partners, who are likely to regard this as political persecution. It is difficult to judge whether the Office of the President understands this and whether Vladimir Zelensky is ready to take such a drastic step. But there is no denying the fact that in some moments the current government is ready to use the methods of the late period of Viktor Yanukovych’s “reign”.
But so far everything suggests that with a high probability the “coal case” will become another opportunity to put a spoke in the wheels of Poroshenko and his party, which remain a certain irritating factor for the President’s Office.
