Ex-Ukrainian President Yanukovych gets 15-year more jail term in absentia for 'illegal border crossing'

A Kyiv court sentenced former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to an additional 15 years in prison in absentia on Monday for bypassing an official checkpoint while crossing into Russia 11 years ago, as well as arranging the illegal border crossings of 20 other people and inciting desertion.

The verdict was announced by the Podilskyi District Court, which found Yanukovych guilty of “organizing the illegal crossing of persons across the state border of Ukraine and incitement to desertion,” said the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office in a statement on Telegram.

The statement claimed that the former president illegally crossed into Russia by air without passing an official checkpoint on Feb. 23, 2014, and arranged for at least 20 people from his close circle and State Security Administration (UDO) personnel to do the same.

Yanukovych first flew from the country's eastern Donetsk region to the town of Yeysk in Russia's southern Krasnodar region and then traveled to the Crimean Peninsula, where he allegedly incited UDO personnel to desert and facilitated their movement to Russia, the statement added.

He later decided to leave Ukraine permanently and fled Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, with the help of the Russian military, according to the statement, which also claimed that some UDO personnel joined Yanukovych.

The statement said the court also sentenced Yanukovych's then-security chief, Kostiantyn Kobzar, to 10 years in prison for organizing the alleged border crossings and desertions.

The former president was given a 13-year prison sentence back in 2019 on charges of treason.

Yanukovych, widely considered a pro-Russian president, was deposed in 2014 after mass protests, known in Ukraine as the Revolution of Dignity.