The ideologist behind the introduction of sanctions against the leader of “European Solidarity” Petro Poroshenko was Andriy Portnov, and the President’s Office implemented his concept.
The politician himself stated this during a session of the Supreme Court.
“Two weeks before the publications about the sanctions, I, as the leader of European Solidarity, and my political force initiated a petition for President of Ukraine Zelensky to impose sanctions against the state criminal Portnov. This is a well-known fact; we made a corresponding statement in the Verkhovna Rada, and this petition very quickly gained the required 25,000 signatures. It was blocked by the President’s Office, it was blocked by the government, but we registered it. We received a strange response from the subject of our case, Ms. Svyrydenko, stating that they saw no grounds to respond to the petition and impose sanctions. At the same time, we received threats from Portnov that he would take revenge and sanctions would be imposed against me,” Poroshenko recalled.
“I emphasize that the authorities, the President’s Office, Mr. Yermak, cooperating with Portnov, who visited the President’s Office, coordinated efforts to impose the sanctions. And the documents submitted by my defense only provide evidence of the complete match between the fake arguments used by Portnov and those published in the President’s Office Telegram channels,” Poroshenko stated.
“On February 13, immediately after the NSDC meeting, during a visit to the Khmelnytskyi NPP, Zelensky, standing next to Halushchenko — who had been dismissed from the government as a participant in the Mindicator scandal — emphasized that the reason for the sanctions was billions allegedly withdrawn by Poroshenko. For the 11th month they have been making noise about nothing; we have not heard a single word about these billions,” the fifth president noted.
“So I have only two versions. Either Portnov, Yermak and Pronin misled the respondent, or they dragged him into it and he is an accomplice to this crime. I very much hope that the first version is true. The evidence presented to you is indisputable. Therefore, for Portnov, neither Svyrydenko nor the NSDC nor Yermak found grounds to impose sanctions. For the person who is the main organizer of the shootings on Maidan, there are no grounds, but for Poroshenko — there are. And for a year they have not been able to bring a single justification to the court,” Poroshenko stressed.
Today, the panel of judges of the Cassation Administrative Court of the Supreme Court continues to consider Petro Poroshenko’s lawsuit against President Zelensky regarding the cancellation of the illegal decree introducing sanctions. Representatives of diplomatic missions, journalists and members of parliament are present in the courtroom.
Poroshenko in the Supreme Court: the sanctions are Portnov’s revenge, and the President’s Office implemented his plan
Poroshenko’s lawyers have added documents to the case materials proving the identical wording in publications about Poroshenko on resources linked to Portnov, in the relevant petition that did not gather the required number of votes, and in the justification of sanctions in President Zelensky’s decree.
The court also added to the case the ECtHR ruling of 16 October 2025, in which the European Court of Human Rights recognizes that sanctioned individuals in Ukraine do not have sufficient opportunity to protect their rights and lack proper procedural safeguards against arbitrariness during judicial review of a sanctions decision. According to the ECtHR, this ruling is important for upholding constitutional guarantees as part of the rule of law, property rights and effective judicial protection in Ukraine.
Representatives of Zelensky and the Cabinet attempted to object to including the ECtHR ruling in the case materials, but the court upheld the motion of Poroshenko’s side.
During previous sessions of the Supreme Court, evidence of falsification of the decision on sanctions against Poroshenko was examined. Poroshenko’s lawyers showed a film produced by the “1+1” TV channel, where Zelensky directly admitted that the NSDC is his weapon and he uses it — supposedly because it is faster than following the law. The president’s representative in the court urged not to take interviews and public statements of the president into account, claiming they do not determine the position regarding the sanctions decision.
At a closed session of the court, the panel examined documents marked “For Official Use Only,” which formed the basis of the NSDC’s decision. According to lawyer Illia Novikov, there is no adequate explanation in these documents as to why the authorities urgently needed to impose sanctions against the fifth president within just a few hours. Furthermore, part of the documents provided by the respondents was falsified, he said. Representatives of the authorities also stated during the closed part of the session that the sanctions against Poroshenko were imposed for “educational purposes.”
Earlier, President Zelensky’s representative in the Supreme Court admitted that changes were made to the signed decree that put into effect the NSDC’s decision on sanctions against Poroshenko, calling them “technical corrections.”
As lawyer Ihor Holovan previously reported, on July 31 the ruling of the Vinnytsia District Administrative Court came into force in Poroshenko’s lawsuit against the NSDC Secretariat and its Secretary.
“In particular, it was established that the materials of the decree and its annex, which were sent for the president’s signature and dated 12.02.2025, contained errors — in particular, the identification code of Petro Poroshenko listed 11 digits instead of 10. Accordingly, the court established that the president enacted a decree containing an error,” Holovan said.
The court also noted that current Ukrainian legislation does not provide the possibility of correcting errors or making amendments to normative legal acts, including NSDC decisions and presidential decrees, outside the established procedure for adopting the relevant act.
The president’s representative earlier also confirmed during the session that the National Bank of Ukraine illegally imposed financial restrictions against Petro Poroshenko.
Discussion about this post