Yanukovych sentenced to 13 years for treason, war crimes

A Kyiv district court ruled on Jan. 24 to convict
former President Viktor Yanukovych for the crimes of state treason and
participating in conducting an aggressive war. He was sentenced to 13 years
imprisonment. The court dismissed a third criminal charge of participating in
actions to change the boundaries of Ukraine. Yanukovych was tried in absentia
as he has lived in Russia since fleeing Ukraine in February 2014. He is the
first high-ranking official of the Yanukovych administration to have been
criminally convicted. Yanukovych’s defense said it will appeal the verdict.

Zenon Zawada: As with the
creation of the canonical church, the government held this verdict – for crimes
committed nearly five years ago – for president Poroshenko’s re-election
campaign. Unfortunately for the president, the vast majority of Ukrainians
don’t care about Yanukovych anymore, which reveals that his campaign team is
out of touch with the public. As for the canonical church, the consensus among
Ukrainian political experts is that achievement will give the president no more
than three percentage points, which is not enough to narrow the comfortable
lead that frontrunner Yulia Tymoshenko enjoys.

We can expect some other Yanukovych officials to be
convicted as the campaign progresses. But Ukrainians won’t care very much
because they are chiefly concerned about their living standards, which have
worsened in the last five years. Russian President Putin played a large role as
his military invasion caused the hryvnia to collapse. But many Ukrainians are
also disappointed with Poroshenko for failing to use a key opportunity in 2014
to pursue sweeping structural reforms, address corruption and begin to
establish rule of law.

The convictions against top Yanukovych officials would
have more credibility if the government had convicted the low-level
perpetrators of the EuroMaidan violence. But only nine have been convicted and
imprisoned, while dozens of officials who had been involved in the violence are
still serving in government and law enforcement, according to Serhiy Horbatiuk,
the head of the special investigations administration at the Prosecutor
General’s Office. So essentially, many of the top officials have been allowed
to get away with their crimes, regardless of their in absentia convictions.