Expert: The myth of Putin’s powerful ally collapsed: scandalous sound recordings were released

15 percent The support of the electorate, which has been consistently demonstrated by sociological research, is the only basis on which the political forces defending the concept of “one nation” advocate the reestablishment of “economic relations with the Federation. of Russia “and similar relics of the past. , they are still trying to resist. Every day the internal struggle in that pro-Russian camp intensifies. And the central government of Kiev periodically “loses” the ranks of the agents of the “Russian world”, he writes delfi.ru.

Viktor Medvedchuk is one of the most prominent figures in the pro-Russian field: the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, godfather of one of his daughters.

These are the three most important epithets that can be heard on any tram in Kiev, Lviv or Kharkiv, as long as the conversation turns to this policy. But that is not all. He is one of the owners of the media holding company, the same television channels that were the target of sanctions from the National Security Council and, more recently, blocked on the YouTube platform. And just a very rich man: in the latest ranking of the richest in Ukraine by Forbes, V. Medvedchuk is in twelfth position, his assets are valued at 620 million. The main assets are concentrated in the fuel and energy business and the real estate sector.

According to many Ukrainians, the secret of V. Medvedchuk’s power is quite simple: after all, his daughter’s godfather is the powerful V. Putin himself. In the Ukrainian tradition, the role of baptismal fathers is very important, it is a special form of friendship that has already become part of folklore. It is an unwritten rule that baptized parents should help each other always and everywhere. This is a very popular form of nepotism in Ukraine.

Suffice it to say that the third and fifth presidents of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko and Peter Poroshenko, are interconnected precisely through this scheme. But the mere fact that Putin became the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter in 2004 is no guarantee of great friendship and protection. First, the institute involved in the role of baptismal fathers in Russia is much weaker. The second thing: hardly an ambitious Russian leader is interested in the environment of a political loser who has tried unsuccessfully to impose federalization and friendship with Moscow for twenty years.

The true scale of Medvedchuk’s work was revealed by scandalous sound recordings made public by Denis Bigus, a Ukrainian investigative journalism professional, on May 17. In the records, the politician speaks with several hairy officials of the separatist leaders of Moscow and Donbass.

Most were surprised by the tone of his communication, as necessary: ​​a politician who pretends to be dominant and influential, in fact, avoids going to the bottom and lacks even ordinary separatist representatives. Without a doubt, this is just the aria of a common mediator, a small man: “I do everything Putin and Poroshenko ask me to do.”

Those who disapprove of Medvedčuk have probably been impressed by such debunking rhetoric, but supporters are probably very disappointed in it: how can it be that the leader of the pro-Russian parliamentary party Oposition Platform for Life, claiming this political force if not for the president, that is, at least for the post of prime minister, is he just a service invertebrate propelled back and forth?

D. Graduation study:

Thus collapsed the myth of an influential politician whose daughter godfather was the Russian president himself. If Medvedčuk were really that close to Putin, he would be communicating with him directly, not through his army of assistants. The Russian president should defend his friend and close relative in his beloved “asymmetric” way. Only for some reason does the case of V. Medvedčuk comment only on his spokesman Dmitry Peskov, and this is minimal: we do not plan to interfere, we just want to make sure that there are no political motives in the persecution of V. Medvedčuk.

Medvedchuk has been charged with treason: he has run a business in occupied Crimea and has provided Russia with information on a secret Ukraine unit. It would seem that a politician with such luggage should have been immediately placed in solitary confinement, but he was given a fairly mild pre-trial measure: house arrest. Mr. Medvedčuk now participates in court hearings in a disciplined manner, complaining about political persecution, alluding to the possibility of going to the European Court of Human Rights and calling Mr. Bigus’s investigation a “lie”.

It is obvious that for some reason the friends of the party are in no rush to more actively rescue their “prisoner of conscience”. Only strange deputies, such as Ilya Kiva, go to court, and the party leader, Yuri Boyko, does not appear at the meetings, only talks about preparing to release the perpetrator on bail.

The impression is that “The opposition platform” For Life “has decided to take the position” the unit did not notice the loss of a soldier. “Anyway, there are enough problems in the pro-Russian camp, and Medvedčuk is too harmful, it is detained and therefore politically neutralized, which benefits the Boyko-Levočkin group within the party, which works for the interests of Dmitry Firtash.

Doubts that Medvedčuk was not as compelling as he would have liked arose last year when he decided to ban the book “The Case of Vasily Stus” by journalist and historian Vachtang Kipiani. The book mentions the fact that in the 1980s Medvedčuk was a lawyer for dissident poet Vasily Stuss. The book also contains a statement that leaves no room for interpretation, that “I consider that the qualification of his actions (of Vasily Stuss) is correct”.

At the end of the process in which Medvedčuk was involved, V. Stus was sent to the Mordovia camp, where he died in 1985. This episode of the biography – V. Medvedčuk Achilles Heel, quite aggressively denies his responsibility for the fate of the poet: according to the laws of that time, anti-Soviet activities were a crime and, from a legal point of view, there are no claims that they cannot be.

It was only in 2020 that he lost the case against V. Kipiani, and the book The Case of Vasily Stus became a real best-seller, its circulation is regularly repeated. This episode perfectly illustrates that the myth that a former lawyer and civil servant can force the judiciary to dance to their bagpipes is highly overrated.

The state treason case is likely to continue for several years. It is still difficult to say if the sentence will be severe. Medvedčuk retires “underground” again. Such a stage in her life was already there: after losing in the 2006 parliamentary elections, she went into the shadows and did not recover until 2012. At that time, even on Internet search sites, she was only the wife of the popular TV presenter Oksana Marchenko.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky chooses the most political points in this situation. First, he bases his new image as a “strong hand”: a president who, with the help of the Security Council, is fighting against the fifth column. The second thing: the history with Medvedchuk eliminates one of the rivals, Peter Poroshenko, who is named as an excellent candidate for mediator in dialogue with Moscow. And third: the position of the Platform of the Opposition for Life is weakening, and its supporters can run to the side of the Servant of the People of the President.