(Reuters) -Former President Petro Poroshenko said on Wednesday that Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council had adopted sanctions against him, and he accused political rival President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of being behind the move.
“The National Security and Defence Council has just adopted an unconstitutional, politically motivated decision to introduce sanctions against me, Petro Poroshenko as the leader of the opposition and the fifth president,” Poroshenko said in a video statement.
After a popular uprising led Ukraine’s pro-Russia president to flee, Poroshenko, a confectionery magnate, was elected in 2014. But he lost the 2019 election to Zelenskiy and he has been dogged by allegations of wrongdoing and mismanagement.
Poroshenko, who heads the largest opposition bloc in Ukraine’s parliament, did not disclose terms of the sanctions but alleged the president stood personally behind the action.
“Zelenskiy today struck a colossal blow to our internal unity which…has been our main weapon in the fight against the aggressor,” he said, referring to Russia’s nearly three-year-old invasion of Ukraine.
Zelenskiy, who won the 2019 poll by a landslide, said in his
nightly video address that the council had approved decisions that would be made public on Thursday. He made no reference to Poroshenko.
“Anyone who has undermined Ukraine’s national security and helped Russia must be held accountable,” Zelenskiy said.
“The billions made in what amounted to the sale of Ukraine and Ukrainian interests and Ukrainian security must be blocked and made to work for the protection of Ukraine and Ukrainians.”
After Zelenskiy took power, Poroshenko was formally placed under investigation on charges of helping Russian-backed separatists who seized large parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014, eight years before the full-scale Russian invasion.
Poroshenko was also embroiled in a scandal over corrupt practices in military procurement. And he faced heavy criticism for overseeing the Minsk agreement – now denounced by Zelenskiy and many other politicians – that was aimed at resolving the 2014 separatist rebellion.
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Ron Popeski, Leslie Adler and Cynthia Osterman)
