Ukraine's ex-president Viktor Yanukovych is not ready to come to the country to give evidence in the investigative actions and participate in court hearings due to a threat to his life and the absence of security guarantees from public bodies, his lawyer Vitaliy Serdiuk said.

He told a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine office on Wednesday that it had taken the case involving an assassination attempt against Viktor Yanukovych on February 21-22, 2014 half a year to be entered into the Ukrainian unified register of pre-trial investigations, and after it was entered the Prosecutor General's office sent the case to the Interior Ministry, not wishing to investigate it.

"The Interior Ministry's Main Investigative Department generally avoided working on this case for a long time as very many procedural requests were made. All procedural requests were declined, the defense lawyers contested them in court, the court declined, too. After that, the case was sent to the Interior Ministry [branch] of the Kyiv region, which is not investigating it," the lawyer said.

Serdiuk said he is convinced that the only conclusion from this is that there is a threat to Viktor Yanukovych's life. "Bearing in mind that these cases are not being investigated, that calls are constantly made for Yakukovych to be killed, it's not possible to speak about any safety in the territory of Ukraine. For this reason, it's not possible to say that Yanukovych will come and that the state can provide him with proper security measures," the lawyer said.

Serdiuk also said there has been an assassination attempt against himself and his family members. "A shot was fired, which, fortunately, didn't hit the target, but a nearby car. We made relevant procedural requests and provided evidence to the Prosecutor General's Office asking for security measures to be taken; it declined them, the case was sent to the district department, where it was swept under the carpet," the lawyer said.