MOSCOW, May 31. /TASS/. The team of Ukraine’s ex-president Pyotr Poroshenko has removed the servers of the country’s National Defense and Security Council from the presidential administration possibly to cover up certain tracks, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman wrote on her Facebook page on Friday.
"Western sponsors provided Poroshenko and his team with vast funding to finance their efforts to build a ‘new Ukraine,’ including projects in defense and information security. And now, the [new] ‘unmercenary’ president has to finance the new equipment on his own. I think this charity stunt was carried out with an eye on covering up tracks later," Maria Zakharova said.
The spokeswoman said she was surprised by the fact that the country’s national security service, the SBU, had turned a blind eye to Poroshenko’s decision to lease equipment for the national security council from a private firm, to finance it out of his own pocket and to install it without proper checks.
"How could equipment be brought and installed at the presidential administration building without proper checks and cataloguing and then subsequently be dismantled and taken away in the same manner?" she asked rhetorically.
On Tuesday, the new secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Alexander Danilyuk, said that monitors, servers and other equipment with classified information had disappeared from the presidential administration’s situation room. He said the disappearance took place when the power transition process was in full swing. The ex-president’s spokesman, Svyatoslav Tsegolko, replied that the lease of the equipment was financed out of Poroshenko’s own pocket, and it was returned to the legitimate owner when Poroshenko lost his post.