During an interview given to the French television channel BFM TV, on March 19, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, 56, could be seen dressed in a military uniform, with bulletproof vest and protective gloves put forward. In the background, three soldiers, two from the front and one from the back, seemed to be as much there to protect him from a possible attack as to show the world that the man who led the country between 2014 and 2019 had nothing lost its leadership status.
Main opponent of Volodymyr Zelensky, Petro Poroshenko never digested his bitter defeat in the 2019 presidential elections, when he saw a former comic actor snatch power from him with 73% of the vote. Once again a deputy and leader of the European Solidarity party, he has been confronted with legal problems since his departure from power. In December 2021, he was officially charged with “high treason” by the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Iryna Venediktova, appointed by Zelensky. Poroshenko shouts at the conspiracy, and at this old Ukrainian tradition of condemnation of the former leaders. He, the fierce opponent of Vladimir Putin, is accused of having worked with the wealthy pro-Russian tycoon Viktor Medvedchuk, a close friend of the Kremlin.
According to the prosecutor’s office, in 2014 and 2015 he facilitated the purchase of coal by companies in the hands of pro-Russian separatists. But in January 2022, Ukrainian justice decided to keep him free, while prohibiting him from leaving the country. A month later, the fate of Ukraine is turned upside down. And pariah, Poroshenko finds a place of choice on the political scene.
He uses his fortune to finance several battalions
From February 24, President Zelensky indeed met several times with his predecessor, in order to ask his advice on how to distribute arms to combatants. Poroshenko submits to him the idea of entrusting this work of distribution to the Chamber of Deputies. Zelensky accepts, and the sixth fortune of the country then becomes the financier of several battalions, which he sometimes goes to deliver in person, accompanied by a squadron of soldiers. He encourages men, insults Putin, and sings the glory of Ukraine. But he also personally took the lead of one of these groups, nicknamed the “Poroshenko battalion”, where 800 men from different backgrounds rub shoulders.
While some are anonymous volunteers, others are former leading political figures. We should mention the presence of Poroshenko’s former interior minister, Yuri Lutsenko, and his former secretary of the National Security Council, Oleksandr Tourchynov. The ex-president regularly visits “his” men and provides them with the military equipment they need. Thus, Poroshenko and his followers show themselves in a new light in the hope of one day donning the hero’s costume, which Zelensky largely wears today, but which he should not keep, at the end of the conflict, the exclusivity.
Petro Poroshenko therefore has a political showcase to restore and he wants at all costs that he and his supporters stand out from the other deputies, who visit the battered towns in costume and take photos with the survivors. He soaks his hands in the mud, like a humble citizen. Because as he said at the beginning of March in front of the cameras of France 3, “today, there are no more commanders, we are all soldiers, defenders of Ukraine”. A declaration of love for his country but also a discreet attack on the current president.