A man jumped on the car of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko as he was driven away from being questioned as a witness on Thursday over the sale of his shipbuilding plant to another businessman, Reuters reports.
TV footage also showed the man spraying gas into the face of one of Poroshenko’s bodyguards who had rushed to intervene, before being hit with an umbrella by another bodyguard. No one was hurt.
“This is a provocation by the pro-Russian gangsters who raised their heads after the change of power in Ukraine,” said Svyatoslav Tsegolko, Poroshenko’s spokesman, in a text message, about the attack, without giving further details.
Poroshenko, who campaigned on a strong anti-Russia ticket, lost April’s presidential election by a landslide to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a former comedian who has promised to tackle entrenched corruption and low living standards.
Known as the “chocolate king”, Poroshenko become one of Ukraine’...