Before initiating a halt to the transit of Russian oil through Ukraine, MP Petro Poroshenko should be held criminally liable for the oil pipeline that was illegally alienated from Ukraine earlier. Political expert Petro Oleshchuk writes about this, UNN reports.
"Poroshenko demands to stop the transit of Rosneft oil, although he has not yet answered for the oil product pipeline that he, together with Medvedchuk and the Russians, squeezed from Ukraine. The leader of Eurosolidarity forced his entire faction in the Verkhovna Rada to register a draft law banning the transit of Russian oil through Ukraine during martial law. The faction tried to explain to Petro Oleksiyovych that it was better not to raise this topic while the criminal cases on the Medvedchuk pipeline, which the "hetman" and Putin's godfather "borrowed" from Ukraine, were ongoing. But he did not agree," writes political expert Petro Oleshchuk.
According to Oleshchuk, who cites a publication by the Dzerkalo Tyzhnia weekly, Poroshenko and Medvedchuk illegally appropriated the Samara-Western Direction oil pipeline (popularly called the Medvedchuk pipe) through the Russians in 2016. At the time, according to investigative journalist Yuriy Nikolov, the pipe was a kind of barter between Putin and Poroshenko. It was a kind of "thank you" from Putin to Poroshenko for Poroshenko's plant in Crimea, which became Russian property.
"According to Medvedchuk himself, virtually the entire top of the state apparatus was involved in the pipe scheme, starting with then-President Poroshenko and ending with ministers, law enforcement officers and those who directly implemented the scheme. According to open source data, the pipe cost Poroshenko only $23 million and earned $42 million a year. If we multiply it by 5 years, while the pipe was owned by the "hetman," Petro Oleksiyovych earned $210 million, and Ukraine, accordingly, suffered losses of $210 million," Oleshchuk said.
As you know, in 2023, the Supreme Court finally recognized the state's ownership of the Ukrainian part of the Samara-Western Direction oil product pipeline, taking it away from Poroshenko and Medvedchuk.
As was reported earlier, Poroshenko has to pay Ukraine back $210 million in damages for the misappropriated oil pipeline.