Viktor Yanukovych's lawyer, Oleksandr Horoshynsky, during a court debate on the ex-president's treason case, asked the court to declare invalid all procedural decisions and actions of the prosecution against his client as a suspect.

"I ask the court during the adoption of a court decision in the deliberation room to recognize as inadmissible all procedural decisions and actions of the prosecution committed against Viktor Yanukovych as a suspect, in the absence of evidence of direct personal presentation to Yanukovych of the Code of Criminal Procedure and in compliance with the procedural rules," he said at the debates in Obolonsky district court of Kyiv on Monday.

Horoshynsky insists that on November 28, 2016, Yanukovych did not receive the status of a suspect when Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko verbally informed him about the suspicion during a break in the session of the Sviatoshinsky Court of Kyiv in the case of ex-Berkut policemen, where Yanukovych acted as a witness via video link from the Rostov Regional Court of the Russian Federation.

He also noted that in his appeal he raised the issue of closing the criminal proceedings in connection with the arguments given by the lawyer, namely "the expiration of the deadlines for the pretrial investigation." The defender asked to attach his appeal to the materials of the criminal case on state treason of Yanukovych.