Current legislation does not prohibit people who are subject to sanctions in Ukraine from running for office. However, restrictive measures may prevent them from using the financial instruments required for an election campaign.
In particular, opening a fund. First Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Korniyenko said this in an interview with LB live.
“At present there is no direct ban. But technically, given that sanctions often include a ban on using financial instruments, I suspect they simply will not be able to use the elections’ financial instruments — that is, opening election fund accounts,” he said.
Oleksandr Korniyenko added that any activity by a candidate must be paid for from the fund.
Asked directly whether Petro Poroshenko will be able to take part in the elections, he said he does not know and that it is necessary to wait and see whether Poroshenko wants to take part in the elections and in what role.
- The President imposed sanctions on Petro Poroshenko in 2025. This year, the Supreme Court refused to lift them.
- The President himself, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the sanctions were introduced because billions of hryvnias were taken out of Ukraine during the war. According to him, the sanctions could be lifted if the people against whom they were imposed return the money to Ukraine and it is directed to the army.
- Information that financial monitoring had detected money laundering through a foundation had surfaced earlier as well. This was discussed at one of the recent meetings of the National Security and Defence Council. But at the time Poroshenko was not mentioned, and the discussion focused on financing parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate.
- The Supreme Court has been considering Poroshenko’s lawsuit seeking to have the sanctions declared unlawful since spring 2025.
- The defence insists that violations were committed when the sanctions were applied.
- Olha Ayvazovska, Chair of the Board of the OPORA network, explained that the National Security and Defence Council’s sanctions against Petro Poroshenko, including a ban on entering into transactions, could become an obstacle for the fifth president if he wanted to run in post-war elections.