Ukraine's former defence minister hides in Minsk hospital from Prosecutor General's Office

Mykhailo Yezhel remains in a hospital in Belarus.

The Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine investigates the activity of all ministers of defence since 2001. Ex-defence minister Mykhailo Yezhel left for Belarus after he had been charged with undermining the defence potential of the Armed Forces. He still remains in a hospital, LIGABusinessInform cites Chief Military Prosecutor of Ukraine Anatolii Matios as saying.

“Yezhel said he was looking for a lawyer... According to him, he used his diplomatic immunity to go to Belarus to pack his bags, but fell sick and was taken to the central clinical hospital of Belarus. He is still in the intensive care unit. We are waiting for him to be discharged from hospital to choose pretrial restrictions for him... We didn't have any legal ways to detain him on the border, because he used a diplomatic car. Ukrainian laws don't even allow relieving him of his duties as ambassador [to Belarus],” Matios said.

He recalled that the Prosecutor General's Office investigates the activity of all defence ministers since 2001 to find out who is responsible for undermining Ukraine's defence capability.

A criminal case was opened over decisions by ministers of defence Volodymyr Shkidchenko, Yevhen Marchuk, Oleksandr Kuzmuk, Anatoliy Hrytsenko, Yuriy Yekhanurov, Mykhailo Yezhel, Dmytro Salamatin, Pavlo Lebedyev and the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces.

“It means that […] we investigate actions or lack of actions of these persons and evaluate every organisational and managerial document,” Matios said.

“One of the examples of the degradation of the country's Ministry of Defence and the army's defence capability is the fact that none educational or scientific institutions in the structure of the Ministry of Defence were included in the list of expert bodies that have the right to carry out such evaluations... It doesn't allow considering conclusions of specialists to be evidence in criminal proceedings,” he added.

Mykhailo Yezhel was Ukraine's minister of defence since March 11, 2010, till February 8, 2012. He was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to Belarus on April 3, 2013. Yezhel was reported by the media in November 2013 to be suspected of embezzling 46.7 million hryvnyas.