KHARKIV, Oct. 22 – Serhiy Vlasenko, a defense lawyer for former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, has described as absurd the decision of Kiev's Economic Court of Appeals to suspend the consideration of an appeal on the payment of the debt of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU) Corporation to the Russian Defense Ministry.

"It's an absolutely absurd decision from the point of view of logic, because while filing a petition, a representative of the Cabinet of Ministers said: 'We're asking [the court] to transfer [the decision] to the SBU so that they determine whether there were guarantees.' However, the Cabinet of Ministers itself, as the body that should have allegedly given these guarantees, said that these guarantees do not exist. There is a document of the Finance Ministry that these guarantees do not exist. I want to emphasize that the SBU is not a body that determines whether there were guarantees or not. This should be done by the Cabinet of Ministers, and it did it," Vlasenko told Interfax-Ukraine on Monday.

He also noted that it was known about the existence of a case on the UESU Corporation's financial abuse, in which Tymoshenko is a defendant, during the consideration of a lawsuit lodged by the Russian Defense Ministry against the Ukrainian government in a lower court, but a government representative filed no petitions of this kind at that time.