Obolon District Court in Kyiv has found fugitive ex-President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych guilty of high treason and abetting Russia in waging an aggressive war against Ukraine in 2014. He was sentenced to 13 years of imprisonment in absentia on Jan. 24.
It took judges eight hours to read the lengthy verdict. At the same time, Yanukovych was acquitted on one charge of infringement on Ukraine’s territorial integrity with an aim of separatism, as judges ruled that prosecutors had not provided sufficient evidence.
Yanukovych is unlikely to serve his term in jail as he remains in Russia, where he fled in February 2014 during the EuroMaidan protests. The demonstrations erupted a few months earlier after he refused to sign an association agreement with the European Union and decided to strengthen ties with Russia instead.
The verdict can only be enforced if Yanukovych is arrested on the territory of Ukraine, Markiyan Halabala, a lawyer for families of the Heavenly Hundred, or civilians protesters killed during EuroMaidan in clashes with law enforcers, told the Kyiv Post.
Yanukovych’s defense attorneys announced they would appeal the verdict in the Kyiv Court of Appeals and file a lawsuit to the European Court of Human Rights. They insist that the trial in absentia was politically motivated and violated their client’s right to defense.
The trial of Yanukovych has lasted for one-and-a-half years, since May 2017. In 2014, the government of Ukraine amended the Criminal Code allowing pre-trial investigation and trial without the physical presence of a defendant.
“There’s no doubt that the court worked in the interests of the current leadership of the country. All witnesses in the case were current leaders. The court dismissed most of the defense’s evidence and witnesses,” said lawyer Oleksandr Horoshynskyi.
The main evidence in the case was Yanukovych’s letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, sent after he fled Kyiv on Feb. 22, 2014, in which he asked the Russian leader to send troops to Ukraine to help him regain power. Prosecutors claimed that by doing so, Yanukovych gave the Kremlin a reason to justify its military invasion and occupation of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region in 2014.
An unprecedented high-profile legal process saw the submission of testimony from top Ukrainian officials, including President Petro Poroshenko.
Yanukovych called the trial a sham and, predictably, didn’t show up for the hearings. Three days before he was supposed to give his final statement in court via video link on Nov. 19, he was reportedly hospitalized 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.
