Ukraine’s ousted former president, Viktor Yanukovych, was reportedly hospitalized in Moscow with serious injuries just days before he was scheduled to give the final statement in his treason trial.
Yanukovych was rushed to Moscow’s Sklifosovsky Institute hospital by ambulance on Nov. 16 in an “immobilized condition” after sustaining a serious back injury and a knee injury while playing tennis in the Moscow suburbs, Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid reported on Nov. 18.
Yanukovych was reportedly placed in the institute’s emergency division, and the hospital briefly restricted visitors to the ward. The former president was then transferred to a private clinic, according to the news report.
The Sklifosovsky Institute later confirmed that Yanukovych was treated there in comments to Russia’s state RIA Novosti news agency.
However, the timing of Yanukovych’s injury has raised suspicions that it may be a convenient ruse.
“I can’t know for certain about Viktor (Yanukovych’s) health, but this ‘sensational’ news looks very interesting in the context of tomorrow’s events,” Dmytro Replianchuk, a journalist at Ukraine’s Slidstvo.info investigative unit, wrote in a Nov. 18 Facebook post.
On Monday, Nov. 19, Yanukovych is scheduled to give a final statement by video link in the latest court session of his ongoing high treason trial.
Later on Nov. 18, Yanukovych’s lawyer, Oleksandr Horoshynsky told the 112 television channel that the fugitive ex-president’s legal team was gathering the necessary medical documents to convince the Kyiv court that Yanukovych cannot take part in the hearing.
“He cannot move independently” because he is in a cast, Horoshynsky said. “The doctors say that he has a serious trauma. He will be (recovering) for a minimum of 21 days, two to three weeks.”
Yanukovych was driven from power in the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, and subsequently fled to Russia, where has lived since then.
The former president’s high treason case began in Kyiv’s Obolonsky District Court in May 2017. In October, the court finished hearing arguments in the case.
Yanukovych also faces charges of aiding and abetting actions aimed at changing Ukraine’s state and territorial borders and aiding and abetting in aggressive war.
