She was a heroine of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, which brought Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency, and the main opponent of Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych. The U. S. Congress has issued resolutions in her support. Special commissioners of the European Parliament worked to get her out of prison.
This is all about Yulia Tymoshenko, twice the nation’s prime minister, who recently has made another political flip and now almost openly supports Viktor Medvedchuk, a leader of the 44-member pro-Russian opposition in Ukraine’s parliament and a personal friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
At the end of 2019, in Ukraine’s parliament, journalists spotted one scene whose participants would have preferred to remain unnoticed. Tymoshenko warmly greeted Medvedchuk, pressing her left cheek against his lips, putting her right hand into his palm for a handshake. The scene took place under the balcony of the Verkhovna Rada in the session hall, where parliamentary photographers rarely point their cameras.
That little scene contradicted the public image of both Tymoshenko and Medvedchuk, who first became members of the Ukrainian parliament in 1996 and since then have had a direct influence on Ukraine’s development for nearly a quarter-century.
For many years, Tymoshenko and Medvedchuk have declared polar-opposite values in public. She went to the United States for backing and spent millions of dollars on lobbyists, and was the first to start using them back in 1997. The former member of Congress from Kansas, Jim Slattery, admitted that he had worked for Tymoshenko during our meeting in his office on K Street in Washington, D. C. Medvedchuk, on the other hand, has not been allowed to visit the U.S. for many years, and has been under direct sanctions since 2014.
This changed.
In her earlier years in power, Tymoshenko cultivated her image of a pro-European politi-cian. But since 2019, she and Medvedchuk started promoting a common agenda.
Today, Tymoshenko is constantly appearing on Medvedchuk’s TV channels, which are officially owned by another lawmaker from his pro-Russian party, Taras Kozak.
By the way, Kozak held the post of the deputy head of State Customs Service during Tymoshenko’s second term as prime minister.
Back during her term in the Cabinet, Tymoshenko helped the sale of a large Ukrainian corporation, Industrial Union of Donbas, to VneshneconomBank of Russia, whose supervisory board was headed by Putin himself. As it later became known in the course of the London trial of the former shareholders, Medvedchuk was behind the scenes of this billion-dollar deal and could well have received part of the enormous commission which amounted to $225 million.
During those years, Tymoshenko also signed an extremely unfavorable contract for the supply of natural gas from Russia, generating rumors about her playing on the Kremlin’s side. The contract was at the heart of the Stockholm arbitration proceedings between Ukraine’s Naftogaz and Russia’s Gazprom, with Ukraine winning almost $2.6 billion in compensation. Tymoshenko was brazen enough to try to claim credit for the victory.
Friends in business?
Although Tymoshenko and Medvedchuk’s tacit links were noticeable, it has been impossible to establish the financial basis for their relations. However, thanks to the transparent system of income declarations of politicians in Ukraine, which I had backed as a lawmaker, many secrets have been revealed.
For example, Medvedchuk had to declare that his wife, a TV presenter, owns the offshore company Fregata Marine Ltd, registered in the Marshall Islands. The company owns one of the world’s most expensive yachts, a 92.5-meter-long boat called Royal Romance, valued at about $200 million.
But his declaration unveiled another interesting fact. While Medvedchuk and his wife declared many bank accounts in Ukraine, they gave preference to just two banks. The first one is PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest bank which was nationalized a few years ago and serves over 22 million Ukrainians.
But the name of the second bank, where Medvedchuk and his wife have opened ac-counts in hryvnia, Russian rubles, American dollars, and euros, will not say much to the Ukrainian public. It is a little-known Ukrbudinvestbank and the only remarkable fact about this bank is that until June, half of its shares were owned by Tymoshenko’s son-in-law Artur Chechotkin.
A mogul like Medvedchuk could have placed his funds in any major bank in Ukraine. Some of them are subsidiaries of Russian banks, which would certainly be a comforting fact for Medvedchuk. However, he chose a little-known bank associated with Tymoshenko.
Even more noteworthy is the fact that this small bank serves Anvitrade, one of the largest sellers of diesel fuel in Ukraine with a turnover of hundreds of millions of hryvnias. This company is associated with Medvedchuk. It opened an account in the bank of Tymo-shenko’s son-in-law in 2019.
Anvitrade is a key cash generator for Medvedchuk’s circle. It is the exclusive operator of diesel fuel shipment from the pipeline that delivers diesel from Russia to the Ukrainian market. The Ukrainian part of the pipeline used to be state-owned but ended up belonging to a Swiss company linked to Medvedchuk’s circle. It became possible thanks to the loyal courts and the approval of the antimonopoly committee — all during the rule of the supposedly very anti-Russian President Petro Poroshenko.
Through Anvitrade, Medvedchuk or his circle allegedly control at least one-third of the diesel fuel market in Ukraine. It can’t be a coincidence that a company this big is served by a small bank associated with Tymoshenko’s family. It can be a way for the company to be sure that a friendly bank will shield it from tax office inquiries.
Cross-aisle alliance
Cooperation in business goes hand in hand with a political alliance.
Tymoshenko and her 24-member faction in parliament, with the support of Medvedchuk and his 44-member faction, applied to Ukraine’s Constitutional Court to declare the un-bundling of Naftogaz, a state-owned gas and oil operator, as illegal, stressing its strategic importance.
At the end of the day, it can damage Naftogaz and help Russia’s Gazprom.
In 2019, Naftogaz and Gazprom signed a new contract that was good for Ukraine — it obliges Russia to pay for the transit of 65 billion cubic meters of gas in 2020, even if it doesn’t pump the contracted volumes through Ukraine, and for the next four years — for 40 billion cubic meters annually.
With a decline in gas demand in Europe, Russia would be happy to break this contract, but with Ukraine’s hands. This is exactly what Medvedchuk and Tymoshenko are trying to do by collapsing one of the potential sources of economic success for President Vo-lodymyr Zelensky’s administration.
Another example of their obvious joint efforts was Tymoshenko’s support of Russia’s in-formation attack on Ukraine’s negotiating positions on a peaceful settlement in Donbas. Last week, Dmitriy Kozak, Kremlin envoy for in Ukraine, expressed his disappointment with the talks with Zelensky’s office.
A few days later, Tymoshenko pronounced the talks “a failure.” She suggested creating some kind of parliamentary negotiating delegation.
“I appeal to all members of parliament to create a special parliamentary mission to actively participate in all international negotiations on the return of peace to Ukraine and our terri-tories,” Tymoshenko said earlier this week.
This proposal is in line with Medvedchuk’s longstanding plans, who had previously pre-sented his initiative of inter-parliamentary dialogue of the Normandy format countries in Moscow, Paris, and Berlin. At the same time, among his European interlocutors were mostly representatives of pro-Russian and marginal anti-European parties.
Everything points to the fact Medvedchuk tries to get Tymoshenko to help him create a strong pro-Russian platform in Ukraine at Putin’s request. He has failed to achieve it single-handedly — his pro-Russian Opposition Platform, even with the support of a bundle of TV channels and its strong standing in the polls, has no real influence on the country’s administration.
The ultimate goal is to legitimize the Kremlin’s scenario of the reintegration of the Donbas through European institutions.
Having suffered a defeat at the level of the French president and German chancellor, Putin and Medvedchuk are trying to win the war in the Donbas for Russia through the national parliaments. And Tymoshenko, whose revolutionary halo is gone just like her legendary braid, is their accomplice.
The next time she calls on her friends in the West, they should remember that Russia’s main agent in Ukraine stores his money in Tymoshenko’s family bank. Then, hopefully, her passionate speeches won’t deceive them anymore.
Sergii Leshchenko is a Kyiv Post columnist, investigative journalist, and former mem-ber of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.
