Former president faces charges of high treason
KYIV – From the outset, post-Soviet Ukraine’s fourth president, Viktor Yanukovych, started lying.
“I’ve never committed a crime,” he said via video link from a Russian court in Rostov-on-Don on November 28.
It was his first testimony to a Ukrainian court, given as a witness, and related to the trial of five riot police officers who were allegedly involved in the mass killings in central Kyiv during the Euro-Maidan Revolution in 2013-2014.
Like Mr. Yanukovych, many of the law enforcement officers who allegedly gunned down some 100 protesters during the uprising either fled to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea or to Russia.
While giving testimony that lasted over six hours, Mr. Yanukovych failed to mention that he is a twice-convicted felon. He was given a three-year sentence for theft in 1967 at the age of 17. He was incarcerated three years later for inflicting bodily harm and was handed a two-year sentence.
Now, Mr. Yanukovych, 66, faces charges of high treason and at least a dozen more crimes, based on a notice of suspicion that Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko read to the disgraced former president during a break in his testimony.
In particular, he charged him with committing “high treason,” aiding and abetting Russia to encroach on the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” and for causing more than 1 trillion hrv ($40 billion U.S.) in damages to the state.
During testimony and a post-trial news conference that he gave, Mr. Yanukovych acknowledged writing a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 1, 2014, that requested military deployment and the use of force in Ukraine.
He called it an “emotional decision,” adding that the request “wasn’t fulfilled.” In a previous news conference that Mr. Yanukovych gave on November 25 in Rostov-on-Don, he justified Russia’s occupation of the Crimean peninsula and said that “relatives-volunteers” from Russian refugee camps had gone to fight in the Donbas – “not mercenaries.”
It is furthermore unclear when Mr. Yanukovych would be tried in absentia for the charges he faces – almost three years after the revolution, and two and a half years from when Russia invaded Ukraine in an unprovoked war that has killed 2,263 Ukrainian servicemen, wounded 8,394 and uprooted over 1 million people from their homes, according to Mr. Lutsenko’s oral indictment.
In his testimony, Mr. Yanukovych couldn’t recall where he was and with whom he spoke on February 18-20, 2014, when the vast majority of protesters were killed. When he did acknowledge speaking to a subordinate or foreign government official, he often couldn’t remember the substance of conversations.
Prosecutors said the native of Yenakiyeve, Donetsk Oblast, was “not honest” and often was evasive in his responses, especially to specific questions.
For example, he couldn’t recall any of the 54 phone conversations with Viktor Medvedchuk – Mr. Putin is godfather to his child – in November 2013-February 2014. Or the two phone calls with Mr. Putin on February 19-20, 2014. Or that Vladislav Surkov, the Russian president’s point man on Ukraine, had visited Mr. Yanukovych’s lavish estate of Mezhyhiria, despite security logs indicating otherwise.
Repeating the Kremlin’s version of events in Ukraine, Mr. Yanukovych referred to the Maidan protesters as “radicals,” and said they fired on law enforcement and that he never gave orders to shoot at the crowds.
He claimed ignorance about who armed the security officials – many of them with sniper rifles – and blamed his former chief of staff, Serhiy Lyovochkin, and energy tycoon Dmytro Firtash for the brutal dispersal of the initial Maidan tent city in November 2013.
Mr. Yanukovych expressed regret for not declaring martial law during the Maidan protests.
“I did make a series of mistakes, I’m not a saint,” he said. “The biggest mistake I committed – I couldn’t, didn’t find the strength at the time to sign an order to bring in the army and declare martial law in Ukraine. Back then, this was the only way to stop the radicals. I wanted to prevent bloodshed.”
In fact, protesters risked their lives to stop trainloads of army personnel from reaching Kyiv by standing on train tracks during the tumultuous Maidan events.
When prosecutors asked the exiled former leader why he never spoke to the Maidan protesters during the nearly three-month uprising, Mr. Yanukovych said, “I did… With representatives of machine-building trade unions.”
Mr. Yanukovych said he didn’t sign the Association Agreement with the European Union – the reason the initial protests started in November 2013 – because the accord was allegedly only for a free-trade agreement, and omitted the political section. He said the conditions went against Ukraine’s national interests because the high-technology sector would have “suffered.”
“Europe doesn’t need our products because they have different standards,” he said. “For example, in rail transport: we have a wider rail gauge.”
The former president also couldn’t say how he eventually ended up in Russia on February 23, 2014, a route that went from his suburban estate via Kharkiv-Donetsk-Crimea. After giving a long, evasive response, he claimed that his motorcade was fired upon by “radicals” near Melitopol in Zaporizhia Oblast.
He said he took only his “personal belongings” with him, despite security video footage from his estate that showed servants removing furniture, paintings, dozens of boxes and cases of items.
“Regarding any kind of money…as of today, I don’t, none of my money has been found in any bank accounts,” Mr. Yanukovych said. “I didn’t and don’t have bank accounts.”
Then, when prosecutor Oleksiy Donsky asked him to explain why he didn’t stop the bloodshed on the Maidan, yet asked Mr. Putin to militarily intervene a few days later, Mr. Yanukovych replied: “This is a philosophical question. I am not a philosopher.”
To stop Russia’s war in the Donbas, amnesty should be given to those fighting there, according to Mr. Yanukovych. The “armed forces should be withdrawn, and, of course, [the region should be] given wide autonomy because it’ll take a long time to rebuild trust and for people to respect each other again, I mean, the Donbas and Ukraine… But the territorial integrity of Ukraine should be preserved,” he said.
Mr. Yanukovych also stated that he still considers himself president of Ukraine.
When asked until which date he considers himself to be the head of state, he replied: “This is a complicated question. I have to date not personally given up this authority. I hold it before the Ukrainian people.”