Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was hospitalized in Moscow on Friday, his lawyer Alexander Goroshinsky has told TASS.

"On Friday I was in Moscow, I tried to contact him, but his assistants told me about his hospitalization," the lawyer said.

"I arrived in the hospital and we talked," Goroshinsky said.

Yanukovych was hospitalized with a suspected spine and knee injury, he said. "I cannot reveal the exact diagnosis, but I saw with my own eyes that the man cannot move."

Earlier in the day, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported on its website citing a source that Yanukovych had been sent to the Sklifosovsky emergency hospital in downtown Moscow with a suspected spine and knee injury, which he had presumably received during a tennis game. The politician was sent to intensive care and later transferred to a private clinic, the source told the paper.

Yanukovych served as Ukraine’s president in 2010-2014. After the coup d’etat in February 2014, he fled to Russia.