President Petro Poroshenko gave a news conference on May 14, hailing the cancellation of visas for Ukrainians with the European Union as his major victory but was challenged by journalists over a lack of progress on reform and high-profile investigations.
The Kyiv Post is one of the few major media outlets in Ukraine that have never been allowed to ask a question at Poroshenko’s news conferences since 2015.
Poroshenko presented European integration, including the visa-free regime, Ukraine’s association agreement with the European Union and the Eurovision song contest, as his chief achievement.
The association agreement was signed in 2014, while the European Union’s Council of Ministers approved visa-free travel for Ukraine on May 11, clearing one of the last remaining hurdles, and Eurovision was held in Kyiv from May 9 through May 13.
“Only crazy people can consider Ukraine to be a part of the so-called ‘Russian world,” Poroshenko said. “Ukraine is part of a united Europe stretching from Lisbon to Kharkiv.”
Poroshenko said that the Netherlands’ Senate would consider on May 30 ratifying the European Union’s association agreement with Ukraine. The Netherlands is the last EU country that needs to ratify the deal before it comes into effect.
Sheremet’s murder
Poroshenko was asked several times about a lack of progress in the investigation into the murder of Belarusian-Ukrainian journalist Pavel Sheremet in Kyiv on July 20.
“I’m not happy that the murderer has not been identified yet and has not been held to account,” Poroshenko said.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and the Slidstvo.info investigative show on May 10 published evidence that Ihor Ustymenko, who was a Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer as of 2014, had visited Sheremet’s future murder site several times and came out of the car there on the eve of the assassination. The SBU has denied involvement, saying that Ustymenko quit the agency in 2014.
Poroshenko thanked the investigative journalists and invited them to have a talk with him about the murder. He said that Ustymenko would be questioned on May 15.
Poroshenko also said that he had called National Police Chief Serhiy Knyazev and asked him to meet with the journalists.
Meanwhile, Slidstvo.info journalist Dmytro Gnap told Poroshenko his promise to involve the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation in the Sheremet case had not fully materialized.
Gnap said that FBI investigators had been allowed to analyze the explosive device that blew up Sheremet’s car after the evidence on the murder site was effectively destroyed when the police decided to wash it away.
The FBI was not allowed to take part in the investigation itself and in the analysis of video footage, Gnap added.
Meanwhile, Radio Liberty journalist Mykhailo Tkach wore a t-shirt with the inscription “Who has killed Pavlo (Sheremet)?” and was not initially allowed to enter because of this, though later the security guards let him through.
Yanukovych cases
Poroshenko also claimed that there had been a lot of progress in investigations into the corruption of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and his allies and into the murders of over 100 EuroMaidan protesters in 2014.
“There’s good statistics of cases sent to trial,” he said. “I believe it’s a great achievement by the Prosecutor General’s Office.”
He also mentioned that a high treason case against Yanukovych had been recently sent to court, and that a court had ruled to confiscate $1.5 billion linked to Yanukovych’s regime.
Critics have dismissed the confiscation hearings as a political show trial. Both the investigation and the trial were conducted in secret and in just two weeks.
In late April Interpol removed Yanukovych and two of his associates from its wanted list due to a lack of progress in the investigations.
Only one graft case against a top Yanukovych ally has been submitted to trial so far, and only one person charged with crimes against EuroMaidan protesters, a pro-government thug, is currently in jail. Cases against three major Yanukovych associates have been closed.
Moreover, four former Berkut riot police officers charged with murder, torture and assault during the EuroMaidan Revolution fled to Russia in April after courts released them from custody.
Prosecution reform
The president also touted his efforts to reform the prosecution service.
“I initiated a prosecutorial reform,” Poroshenko said. “… Legislation has been adopted to strip the Prosecutor General’s Office of investigative functions.”
However, Ukrainian authorities have been dragging their feet since 2015 on creating the State Investigation Bureau and transferring the prosecution service’s investigative functions to it. Poroshenko loyalists are leading in the competition for head of the bureau, and critics say some of the competition commission members have no legal right to take part in the process.
The prosecution reform of 2015 was seen as a failure, with 84 percent of incumbent top local prosecutors keeping their jobs as a result of a competition.
Crackdown on civil society
When asked about the authorities’ ongoing crackdown on anti-corruption activists, Poroshenko said that the civil society has more freedom than ever in Ukraine. At the same time, he spoke of security risks linked to Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine.
Reformist lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko and anti-graft activists Alexandra Ustinova and Vitaly Shabunin have complained over the past month of being followed by people allegedly hired by Ukraine’s State Security Service.
Meanwhile, in March Poroshenko signed a law introducing the same declaration requirements for anti-corruption activists as for government officials – a measure that has no equivalents in the West and is widely seen as a major attack on civil society.
Last year Poroshenko’s supporters also launched large-scale campaigns to discredit the journalists who investigated the president’s offshore firms and to smear Leshchenko over his purchase of an apartment.
Russia links
Poroshenko also commented on audio recordings released by fugitive lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a suspect in a graft case, in which Onyshchenko and a person alleged to be ex-lawmaker Mykola Martynenko accuse the president and his inner circle of large-scale corruption. Martynenko has confirmed meeting Onyshchenko in Spain and London, where the audio recordings were made.
Poroshenko claimed he had not listened to the recordings and was not going to do so. He again dismissed Onyshchenko as a criminal and a tool of the Kremlin.
Earlier in May the president also found himself at the center of a scandal when a photograph of his son Mykhailo wearing a sweatshirt with the word “Russia” emerged. The photo was made in or after early 2014, when Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began, questioning his patriotic sentiment.
Poroshenko said this was part of a Halloween performance but added that he had told his son not to do that again.
