Mr Portnov’s name comes up in any discussion about that third factor. The lawyer was pushed out of
Ukraine by Mr Poroshenko’s post-revolution leadership in 2014, returning to Kiev only on the eve of Mr
Zelensky’s victory. Now he has made it his business to feed requests to prosecute the former president to
the State Bureau of Investigations.
Mr Poroshenko accuses the lawyer of pushing the interests of ex-president Yanukovych. Mr Portnov, in
turn, makes no secret of the animosity he feels for Mr Poroshenko. “I want to remove these people from
the face of the earth,” he tells The Independent over lunch in Kiev. “Poroshenko is a criminal who in five
years has sent our country back decades. I have the evidence for this and I intend to prove it.”
The words come out of Mr Portnov’s mouth like daggers, and they barely hide the anger lurking
underneath.
‘Write that revenge was bleeding from my eyes
if you like’: lawyer Andriy Portnov is pushing
for the public prosecution of Petro Poroshenko
(Oliver Carroll)“You’re calling it revenge?” He says. “Well that’s your interpretation. Write that revenge was bleeding from
my eyes if you like. I’d prefer to describe it as restoring justice and fulfilling a promise.” On the crucial
question, the crusading lawyer denies any working links with the new administration. “If they were helping
me,” he says, “Poroshenko would already be in jail.”
Halyna Yanchenko, an anti-corruption expert turned high ranking member of Mr Zelensky’s new party,
also rejected the accusation Mr Poroshenko was being pursued because of politics. There was no order to
“go after Poroshenko,” she said, adding that that “wasn’t the way the new administration saw the world”.
What that did not mean is that Mr Poroshenko should avoid prosecution. “If there is a crime, he should be
made to answer for it,” Yanchenko said. “But it’s a matter for law enforcement and not politicians to
comment on.”
Members of Poroshenko’s administration are unconvinced.
Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Ukraine’s outgoing deputy prime minister, told The Independent that the
current course very much looked like “political persecution” – and not only against a political opponent but
against an entire political force. The pre-election proposal to expand lustration to former deputies was a
“route to dictatorship,” and a “disgraceful” way to treat people who gave five years of their life when the
country was on its knees.
“The new, young team are falling into old traps of Ukrainian politics,” she said. What was good was that the
elections were free and competitive, but they resulted in an “unprecedented situation of one-party
control.” "There is a temptation to move away from formal procedure, to ignore procedure and law,” she
said. “That is a dangerous path, a slow-ticking bomb.”