Marco Levytsky, Western Bureau Chief.
No “red lines” were crossed at the December 9 Paris Summit bringing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin together with the leaders of Germany and France — the so-called Normandy Four. All that was agreed upon was for an exchange of prisoners and a ceasefire. Whether all the prisoners will be exchanged and whether a ceasefire will hold remains to be seen.
Fortunately, Zelenskyy did not capitulate to Putin on the issue of the timing of elections in the areas of eastern Ukraine held by Russia-backed separatists, and the question of granting special status to the rebel-held areas – a development which would have led to the creation of a fifth column dedicated to destroying Ukraine’s European aspirations and destroying the viability of the Ukrainian state itself.
But while we can breathe somewhat easier following the summit, we find the latest charges being levelled against former President Petro Poroshenko even more alarming than previously.
As we noted in our December 2 editorial, the newly-established State Bureau of Investigations (DBR) on November 18 requested the Prosecutor-General to strip Poroshenko of his parliamentary immunity in order to lay criminal charges against him. They said Poroshenko was suspected of abuse of power and of calling for the overthrow of the government. This is both false and ridiculous.
Then on December 10, DBR spokeswoman Anzhelika Ivanova confirmed to RFE/RL that a criminal case is open on an even more ludicrous charge — “the possible commitment of high treason by Poroshenko.”
Apparently the DBR believes that Poroshenko committed treason when the second Minsk agreement, a 13-point road map for resolving the military conflict in eastern Ukraine, was signed in 2015.
This was intended to replace an earlier Minsk agreement and contains those points which were brought up in the December 9 summit.
But the Minsk agreement never really went into effect since the Russian Federation violated the ceasefire almost immediately after the signing. At any rate, just the idea of charging Poroshenko with “high treason” for signing has no justification whatsoever. It is a politically-motivated, trumped-up charge that immediately brings to mind deposed President Viktor Yanukovych’s persecution and incarceration of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in 2010.
Petro Poroshenko is the president who, as Commander-in-Chief, revitalized the Ukrainian Armed Forces that had been cannibalized by Yanukovych, and turned them into an efficient modern fighting unit that managed to hold the Russian Federation to a stalemate in Donbas and prevent further incursions into Ukrainian territory.
And he’s going to be charged with “high treason”?
Petro Poroshenko is the president who set out to eliminate the remaining vestiges of Soviet Russian imperialism through his de-communization program.
And he’s going to be charged with “high treason”?
Petro Poroshenko is the president who taught Ukrainians to take pride in their own history, language and culture, raising their national consciousness which had been all but obliterated by over 300 years of Russian occupation and atrocities, the worst being the genocidal famine of 1932-33.
And he’s going to be charged with “high treason”?
Petro Poroshenko is the president who paved the way for the recognition of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, sundering the bonds that tied the Ukrainian Church to the Russian Orthodox Church – a body which is subservient to the dictatorial Russian state, as opposed to a much higher authority.
And he’s going to be charged with “high treason”?
Poroshenko himself refers to these charges as “a vivid confirmation of the revanchism that is trying to spread in Ukraine today like a cancerous tumor.”
Which, of course, it is.
What’s more, these charges appear to be directed from two major sources. One of these is Zelenskyy’s mentor Igor Kolomoisky who organized a smear campaign against Poroshenko long before the 2019 election – a campaign which played a critical role in cementing Zelenskyy’s landslide victory.
Kolomoisky is out to get Poroshenko because in 2016 he and his business partner Gennadiy Bogolyubov were accused of defrauding Ukraine’s largest bank, PrivatBank, of billions of dollars. The Ukrainian government nationalized the bank in 2016 after repaying a US$5.6 billion bailout. Kolomoisky left Ukraine for self-exile in Israel, but returned after Zelenskyy’s victory.
The other force behind this vendetta is none other than Putin himself. Putin wants to destroy Poroshenko as a warning to any other leaders who would stand in the way of his imperialist agenda.
This is what is really behind the trumped-up charges being levelled against Poroshenko. Thus, it is not Poroshenko who is guilty of “high treason”. It is the State Bureau of Investigation.
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