A year ago, indefinite sanctions were imposed on the fifth President, leader of the “European Solidarity” party, Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko is challenging Zelensky’s decree on sanctions in the Supreme Court as illegal.
Source: PRYAMYI
Poroshenko’s lawyer, Illia Novikov, posted on his Facebook page a chronology of the sanctions’ preparation, which was revealed during the court proceedings. As is known, over the past year, authorities have not provided the public with any arguments justifying the sanctions against Petro Poroshenko.
“President Zelensky committed an act of political corruption by using the extraordinary sanctions mechanism to eliminate a long-standing political opponent and personal enemy from the elections. He covertly initiated and managed the preparation of the draft, then lied to the public about the reasons for the sanctions. He was knowingly assisted in this by high-ranking officials, committing serious legal violations, including criminal ones,” Novikov states.
“On February 12, 2025, Zelensky signed decree No. 81/2025 on sanctions against Poroshenko. The text of the decree appeared on the president’s website only the following day, containing errors. To prevent Zelensky from losing face by having to sign the decree twice, the corrected version was fabricated and called the ‘clarified edition,’ while the original was labeled as an ‘unofficial publication.’ It was clear that this whole situation was due to the sanctions’ preparation being compressed into 3 hours instead of a week or two. What really happened became known only in October 2025, when, after six months of Supreme Court delays, the last documents were finally issued under the classification ‘for official use only.’ And now we know everything: who did what and when,” Novikov writes.
According to him, from the authorities’ perspective, it was a false start of the election campaign.
“At the Presidential Office, there were illusions that Trump could quickly organize a ceasefire, and they wanted to be ready for the elections before anyone else. Now we see the second phase (coincidentally, starting again on February 11 — a year ago it was Zelensky’s signal for sanctions against Poroshenko, now it is the Financial Times’ publication about Zelensky preparing for the May elections).
The constitutional restriction on holding the presidency for more than two five-year terms is not considered a problem by Zelensky, although there is nothing but a vague theory that the martial law somehow ‘pauses the timer.’ If that were the case, Zelensky could have skipped the elections for two more years after the end of martial law — February 24, 2022, would have caught him at the end of the third year of his term.
In reality, attempting to run for a new five-year term in 2026 would be a real attempt to overthrow the constitutional order with the prospect of civil war. But in 2025 and now, the Presidential Office was not interested in that — only in ratings, budgets, and clearing the field. Removing Poroshenko without extraordinary measures was impossible,” Novikov notes.
“At the beginning of Zelensky’s term, there were hopes that opening 100 criminal cases — at least one would reach conviction. At that time, the late Andriy Portnov took on this project for Zelensky ‘turnkey’: the first statements he brought with him in a suitcase upon returning to Ukraine on Zelensky’s inauguration day. The State Bureau of Investigation quickly began registering them and summoning Poroshenko for interrogations from May 20, 2019. But this was a dead end; none proved viable,” the lawyer states.
“Then there was the ‘Medvedchuk coal case,’ on which Zelensky also had high hopes at the beginning of 2022. It fell into lethargy after Medvedchuk’s exchange in September 2022. By January 2025, when everyone was counting the days to Trump’s inauguration, it became clear that removing Poroshenko from politics through criminal cases by summer–autumn 2025 would not work. As a precaution, the SBI was instructed to still submit the ‘coal case’ to court, just to show in the media marathon that ‘Poroshenko is being tried for treason along with Medvedchuk.’ But the only real working option for a final solution remained sanctions. And sometime in January, Zelensky ordered this mechanism to be launched,” Novikov explains.
“On the morning of February 13, Zelensky was to leave Kyiv for the Munich Security Conference, where he would meet US Vice President Pence for the first time and hear about US aid, ceasefire prospects, martial law, and election scheduling. If sanctions against the opposition leader and main personal enemy were implemented after this news, it would have been even harder to pretend it had nothing to do with politics. In case of negative news from Pence (as happened), the sanctions news would quickly fade into the background. Therefore, the decree had to be signed before departure, meaning at the NSDC meeting on February 12,” Novikov notes.
“The second factor is that on February 11, by voting against bill No. 11392 on the purchase of Russian reactors in Bulgaria for the Khmelnytskyi NPP, ‘European Solidarity’ threatened a deal dear to the President and his minister Halushchenko. ‘Servants of the People’ gave 197 votes; the rest had to be obtained in the usual way. The President, who did not yet know what ‘Midas’ was and how these reactors would impact him and Halushchenko in November of the same year, commented on the parliamentary vote: ‘These are votes for whom cheap energy in Ukraine is simply unprofitable — they fill their pockets or those they depend on with more expensive energy than nuclear. All the numbers are there. Anyone can see and verify.’ In short, the President was offended,” writes the lawyer.
“Whether this was driven more by the desire for immediate revenge or political timing, on February 11, Zelensky gave the signal,” Illia Novikov observes.
“Zelensky still has not admitted the wrongfulness of his actions and has not canceled the decree. State authorities delayed the court process, did not timely provide evidence requested by the court, and submitted false information in explanations. At every step, attempts were and continue to be made to hide documents from the public and Ukraine’s international partners, citing the classification ‘for official use only.’ This classification was imposed by the very officials responsible for the violations and falsifications. The war continues, the winter with blackouts continues. If the Financial Times information is accurate, the Ukrainian authorities have secretly already begun election preparations without lifting martial law. We see it, everyone sees it,” Novikov writes.
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