Other commentators play down the fears of a purge of the former elite.
Oleksandr Martynenko, head of the Interfax Ukraine news agency and a former press secretary to Ukraine’s
second president, Leonid Kuchma, told The Independent that the promises of lustration already looked to be
on the scrap heap. They were made in the heat of an election system, he said; the Zelensky administration is
“looking for ways to step back.”
In Mr Marynenko’s view, the criminal cases against Poroshenko looked more like “an attempt to play on
the former president’s nerves.” It would be hard for Portnov prove anything in court, he added, especially
without a green light from the president, which “doesn’t look like it is coming.”
“The new guys have sent Poroshenko packing, and they think that’s great,” he said. “But this the new
administration is invested in the idea of this being a peaceful revolution, an election at the ballot box. They
are also much more interested in the future, their success than in the past.”
The legal opinion on the prospects for Portnov’s prosecutions is split. The prosecuting lawyer Yevgeniya
Zakrevskaya said there was no public evidence that looked like it might result in a criminal sentence.
Instead, she suggested, the cases against Poroshenko looked more like “a PR and information gathering
exercise” for the wily Portnov.
But others are not so sure. With decisions on the State Investigations Bureau being decided upon by
criminal courts in Kiev, the criminologist Anna Maliar says the former president may have to rely on the
justice system he left behind.
Unfortunately, this is the same justice system he only “pretended to reform,” she tells The Independent.
During his term, the very courts that will decide his fate became more dependent on personal, government
and financial whim. He used them to “settle political scores,” Ms Maliar alleges, and he left many influential
enemies behind.
“For that reason alone, Poroshenko has cause to worry,” she says.