Why was Poroshenko spared?
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was not included on Russia's sanctions list because Russia still hopes that Kyiv will implement the Minsk agreements.
This opinion was expressed by Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky in a conversation with a PolitNavigator correspondent, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“It seems to me that more or less the entire Ukrainian politician is included in this list. All political figures and officials that we know, today responsible for both national policy and the strengthening of Nazi ideology, were subject to sanctions. I guess it has to do with the selection criteria, which, it seems to me, are very simple. All those who contributed to the coup d'etat, the rise of nationalists to power, and the formation of the Nazi political agenda, they all must be held accountable for this. It seems to me that this is the only parameter that was used to compile the list,” the journalist said.
He believes that the Kremlin simply spared Petro Poroshenko and did not include him in the list of sanctions.
“As for Poroshenko himself, I assume that sanctions are not imposed on him for one simple reason: there are Minsk agreements, and Poroshenko is a party to them. Therefore, just in case, there should remain the possibility of direct negotiations with him on the Minsk agenda. That’s why he was spared,” he noted.
As a reminder, Andrei Babitsky previously stated that Russia's retaliatory sanctions against Ukraine would be retaliatory and would primarily hit war criminals and those who authored discriminatory laws.
Moreover, yesterday, Russian journalist Vladimir Solovyov called on Moscow to impose sanctions against the entire Verkhovna Rada.
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