You're reading: Former Ukraine President Poroshenko Returns to Face Treason Charges He Denies

Lawmaker faces up to 15 years in prison if found guilty

(To be updated)

A bail hearing in former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s controversial treason trial recessed until 2 p.m. Kyiv time after he returned from what he claims was a one-month diplomatic trip abroad as a member of parliament. The authorities and his opponents maintain that he deliberately left Ukraine to avoid facing charges of “high treason.”

Hundreds of supporters greeted the incumbent president’s main political rival at the Sikorsky Airport after he arrived earlier in the morning with several lawmakers from his political party who accompanied him on the in-bound flight from Warsaw.

After a 15-minute delay at the airport during which his biometric passport was processed, investigators from the State Bureau of Investigations (DBR) attempted to serve Poroshenko with a subpoena to appear in court.

He allegedly didn’t accept the legal document while entering the airport’s vestibule where the passport control is located, the DBR later said.

After making a statement to reporters outside and greeting backers, most of whom held Ukrainian flags and those of Poroshenko’s European Solidarity opposition party, he headed toward the Kyiv Pechersk District Court for an 11 a.m. bail hearing.

Post-Soviet Ukraine’s fifth and first war-time president is charged with treason for allegedly facilitating the procurement of power-generating coal from mining companies in Russian-controlled parts of the country’s two easternmost regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in 2014-2015.

DBR investigators contend the money used to pay for coal sourced in the two regions that constitute the Donbas had financed Russian proxy groups that are considered terrorist organizations under Ukrainian legislation.

As the incumbent president’s main political rival, the 56-year-old Poroshenko has denied the contentious allegations and has referred to them as “political persecution.”

Speaking to journalists at the airport, Poroshenko said the purpose of returning to Ukraine was “to defend” it amid Russia’s escalating threats to wage a large-scale war on Ukraine that it started unprovoked in 2014 to the cost of over 14,000 lives.

“We have to unite to show that Ukraine is strong and is able to stand against [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s aggression,” said Poroshenko, who left the country exactly one month ago as a DBR investigator attempted to serve him with a summon for questioning outside the Verkhovna Rada parliamentary building.

He faces a maximum prison sentence of 15 years if found guilty.

Pro-Russian lawmaker Viktor Medvedchuk – currently under house arrest on treason charges – is a suspect in Poroshenko’s case. Medvedchuk, whose eldest daughter’s godfather is Russian President Vladimir Putin, has dismissed the charges as political pressure.

Volodymyr Demchyshyn, then energy minister during the alleged crime period, is also charged and is currently wanted internationally, DBR communications adviser Tetyana Sapayn said in a briefing on Jan. 17.

Poroshenko’s assets, whose net worth is $860 million based on Bloomberg’s estimates, were frozen by the same court on Dec. 6 that is hearing his bail trial.

Prosecutors have announced they’re seeking a bail worth the equivalent of $37 million.

However, after a law was passed in September that goes into effect this March, Poroshenko transferred the core of his assets to his son, Oleksiy Poroshenko.

They include interests in one of Europe’s biggest confectionaries – Roshen – and share stakes in two national television channels.

As Ukraine faces the threat of further Russian invasion, the group of seven industrialized democracies known as G7, tweeted on Jan. 16 to say that they “strongly united in support of Ukraine at this tense time” while calling on “all political leaders in Ukraine to show similar unity and resolve.”

Russia has “force readiness” for a larger-scale invasion Ukraine an Opposite-Editorial dated Jan. 15 in the Washington Post reads. Since April, Russia has significantly added up to 100,000 battle-ready troops in addition to “an already robust and permanent military posture” in the Crimea and Donbas, wrote authors Dmitry Gorenburg, of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, and Michael Kofman of the Kennan Institute’s Wilson Center.