US diplomats call newly-elected Ukrainian President Poroshenko 'disgraceful oligarch' – WikiLeaks
Billionaire Petr Poroshenko has been holding high-status positions in Ukraine for a long time, Kommersant newspaper says. The newspaper's journalists have found, what American diplomats wrote about Poroshenko in their dispatches, which were made public by WikiLeaks. Poroshenko was mentioned in the documents of the US Department of State 100 times during the period from 2006 to 2010. At the same time, part of these references was negative.
The majority of negative commentaries about Poroshenko were made during the period from 2006 to 2009.
During this period he was a deputy of the Our Ukraine political party and chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine. Sheila Guoltni, US deputy Ambassador to Ukraine, told the US Department of State on May 26, 2006 that the image of Poroshenko was discredited by "credible accusations of corruption." Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko accused Poroshenko, an ally of Viktor Yushchenko during the Ukraine's Orange Revolution, of lobbying for his own interests. Thus, Poroshenko was ousted as Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine because of a conflict with Timoshenko and the Verkhovna Rada.
In the dispatch of February 16, 2006, John Herbst, US Ambassador to Ukraine, called Poroshenko "an oligarch, who had disgraced himself." On June 21, 2006, the next US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor characterized him as "unpopular politician, who had been supported by the party members due to his business activity." One month later, Taylor wrote that the Our Ukraine political party had followed the advice of "Poroshenko, who personifies all the weaknesses of the party", instead of nominating a young and perspective deputy for the elections.
According to other dispatches of American deputies, Poroshenko, while being Ukrainian Foreign Minister, did whatever he could to prevent Kiev from cooperating with Moscow. During the conference between Ukraine and NATO Poroshenko asked Western colleagues to "oppose Russia's attempts to secure any sphere of influence and to veto Ukraine's aspiration for entering NATO," the dispatch of December 2009 says.
Another US Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft said that Poroshenko himself advised Viktor Yanukovych that he firstly visit Brussels and not Moscow. Poroshenko also "called upon the US not to take seriously the words of Yanukovych, who approved the proposal of former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to create a new security system in Europe." At the same time, Poroshenko was insisting on making Ukraine a member of NATO, in spite of President Yanukovych's position.
Kommersant asked Irina Friz, spokesperson of Petr Poroshenko, about the reaction of Mr. Poroshenko to the references made by the American diplomats about him. However, she said that Poroshenko didn't read them.
