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Why did Poroshenko leave Ukraine on 18 December 2021?
Summary
A look back at the departure of the former president as investigators moved to serve him a summons.
What prompted Petro Poroshenko, a former Ukrainian President and oligarch, to leave the country on 18 December 2021? He departed on what was described as a "pre-planned diplomatic tour" of Turkey and Poland, just after the National Bureau of Investigation attempted to issue him a summons.
The summons concerned charges of abetting terrorism. The Bureau also claimed that Poroshenko had been involved in looting national resources from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
Other political news that week
The departure came in a week of other political moves. On 13 December 2021, Oleksandr Hohilashvili, a deputy minister of internal affairs, was dismissed after a series of high-profile scandals. On 15 December 2021, the Verkhovna Rada renamed the city of Volodymyr-Volynskyi as Volodymyr.
The trip abroad, framed as a diplomatic tour, took place at the moment the investigators' summons was being issued.
