Many Ukrainians welcomed the treason charges against Viktor Medvedchuk, the Kremlin’s gray cardinal in Ukraine for two decades.
But it’s still a big question whether the accusations – as horrible as they are and as credible as they seem – will stick in a nation with no record of bringing the high and mighty to justice.
Medvedchuk and his ally, another pro-Kremlin lawmaker Taras Kozak, were charged with treason on May 11.
Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said she authorized the charges because the lawmakers harvested resources in Crimea, illegally occupied by the Kremlin since its invasion of the peninsula in 2014. Venediktova also accused Medvedchuk of sharing secret military intelligence with Russia amid the Kremlin’s ongoing war and with creating a web of propagandists to destabilize Ukraine.
The prosecution sought arrest or bail of nearly $11 million, but the court placed Medvedchuk under house arrest.
The suspect denied wrongdoing and said he won’t be fleeing the country.
“I’m ready to defend myself because I don’t feel guilty,” said Medvedchuk. “Everything that is going on, it’s political repressions against me as an opposition party leader.”
The accusations against him came as less of a surprise in Ukraine than the fact that his virulently anti-Ukrainian agenda finally caught the prosecutors’ attention.
After his moribund political career was revived under President Petro Poroshenko in 2014, Medvedchuk quickly became Ukraine’s top pro-Kremlin politician.
Until recently, Medvedchuk was flourishing.
He controlled three popular news channels and a pipeline pumping Russian diesel into Ukraine, and co-led Ukraine’s second most popular party, Opposition Platform – For Life, which has 44 lawmakers in the 422-seat parliament.
Medvedchuk also made it to the list of richest Ukrainians for the first time. In 2021, Forbes ranked him as the 12th richest person in the country with a net worth of $620 million.
For years, Medvedchuk was safeguarded by Poroshenko, allegedly in return for his services as a pro-Kremlin bogeyman for Poroshenko’s supporters – something that Poroshenko denies.
After President Volodymyr Zelensky took office in 2019, Medvedchuk’s influence became toxic. His party surged in polls, while his pro-Kremlin propaganda machine began sabotaging Zelensky’s attempts to bring peace to the Donbas.
In February, the National Security and Defense Council abruptly shut down Medvedchuk’s media empire, introduced financial sanctions against him, froze his pipeline and blocked his gas chain. In May, he was charged with three counts of high treason.
His influence, it seems, evaporated in the span of a few months.
High treason
To support the charges against Medvedchuk, Venediktova released recordings of Medvedchuk’s talks with Dmitry Kozak, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deputy chief of staff, who is not related to Taras Kozak.
Earlier, a recording of Medvedchuk’s conversation with top Putin aide Vladislav Surkov was also leaked to the press.
Both recordings were made in 2014-2015 and feature Medvedchuk talking about undermining Ukraine’s interests while supporting Russia’s.
One count of high treason concerns Medvedchuk helping Russia extract natural gas from Kremlin-occupied Crimea.
According to Venediktova, after Russia annexed the peninsula, Medvedchuk re-registered his Kyiv-based company in Russia to extract gas from the Hlyboke gas field near the Crimean city of Kerch.
Medvedchuk has owned licenses to extract gas from Hlyboke since 2002 but extraction only began after Russia’s military invasion and illegal annexation. Venediktova said that the proven gas reserves in Hlyboke are worth $1.4 billion.
The prosecution alleges that Medvedchuk provided Russia with Ukraine’s geological information on the gas field and began extracting gas, and paying taxes and customs into the Russian budget.
Ukrainian lawmaker Viktor Medvedchuk (L) attends a court hearing in Kyiv on May 13, 2021. While prosecutors sought to have Medvedchuk arrested, the Kyiv Pechersk Court placed him under house arrest. Medvedchuk is accused of high treason. (AFP)
“I want to start working already, paying (Russian) taxes,” Medvedchuk allegedly told Dmitry Kozak on the recordings provided by the prosecution.
Separately, Medvedchuk allegedly gave Russia the location of a Ukrainian military unit that had been deployed to Donbas secretly to fight Russia and its proxies, according to Ivan Bakanov, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU.
The third count involves Medvedchuk’s organization called Promin, which was tasked with helping Ukrainians resettle in Russia.
According to Bakanov, the organization sponsored a program under which Ukrainians were trained in Russia and sent back to Ukraine to spread the Kremlin’s narrative.
Medvedchuk’s revival
To understand the magnitude of the case against Medvedchuk, it’s important to look at his history.
Medvedchuk served as President Leonid Kuchma’s chief of staff in 2004. At the time, he was already close with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter.
Medvedchuk has long been accused of helping to organize the rigging of the 2004 presidential election in favor of Kuchma’s successor Viktor Yanukovych. It led to the Orange Revolution, and the presidency of pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko.
During the Yushchenko presidency, and even under Kremlin-backed Yanukovych, Medvedchuk flew under the radar. His main venture was an organization called The Ukrainian Choice, which promoted a closer relationship with Russia.
He reappeared on the political stage in 2014 after Poroshenko came to power and as Russian troops were occupying Crimea and eastern Donbas.
It wasn’t a great time for other pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine. During the 2014 parliament elections, the pro-Russian Opposition Bloc got 9.5% of the vote and just 27 out of 450 seats in the Verkhovna Rada.
The outcast party was the only pro-Russian faction in parliament.
However, Medvedchuk’s influence steadily grew.
In 2014, Ukraine nominated him as its representative in the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. Officially, it was announced that German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested his candidacy. But in a phone conversation with Putin’s aide Surkov, leaked to the press in March, Medvedchuk says that it was Poroshenko who invited him. Poroshenko had a reason to revive Medvedchuk.
He was Putin’s confidant and gave Poroshenko direct access to the Russian president.
Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told the media that Medvedchuk advises the Russian president on issues concerning Ukraine.
This channel worked both ways.
A new tape, leaked to Ukrainian media on May 13, allegedly has Medvedchuk telling a top Russian official in 2015 that he can get Ukraine’s authorities to change the list of Russian individuals and companies that were sanctioned.
Amassing influence
Over time, Medvedchuk built his power base, with help in Ukraine and Russia.
In 2015, Medvedchuk, through a proxy owner, reportedly took control of a key diesel pipeline that runs from Russia to Ukraine.
Ukraine and Russia disputed ownership of the pipeline. In the end, a low-level Ukrainian court gave it to Russia, which sold it to a company believed to be associated with Medvedchuk. He denies ownership of the pipeline.
Ukraine’s Anti-Monopoly Commission, which was controlled by Poroshenko’s allies, authorized the acquisition.
Around this time, the SBU recorded Medvedchuk telling Russian officials that he supports the Russian occupation of Crimea and discussed plans to harvest gas from the peninsula.
The recording was released only now.
According to the SBU tapes, Russia’s Dmitry Kozak ensured that Russia passed a law allowing Ukrainian companies to keep working in Crimea if they re-register in Russia, specifically to accommodate Medvedchuk.
In one conversation, Kozak asks Medvedchuk to make a Russian citizen the official owner of the company, an offer that Medvedchuk gladly accepts.
In 2017, Medvedchuk began reassembling his media empire.
The politician consolidated fractured Kremlin sympathizers and took control of three news TV channels officially owned by his associate Taras Kozak — Channel 112, NewsOne, and ZIK.
Kozak purchased Channel 112 for Hr 73 million and NewsOne for Hr 42 million. The combined price of $4.4 million is absurdly low for Ukrainian TV channels.
Additionally, Medvedchuk acquired a Russian-based oil business and registered it to his wife, TV host Oksana Marchenko.
Poroshenko’s help
Throughout 2015-2017, Russia’s grinding conflict against Ukraine was turning into trench warfare.
Meanwhile, Poroshenko began to lose support after domestic shortcomings such as economic stagnation and his obstruction of anti-corruption reforms.
Elected on a moderate pro-Western platform, Poroshenko began turning more nationalistic as his re-election approached in 2019.
A new pro-Kremlin party, the Opposition Platform, co-chaired by Medvedchuk, looked to be a suitable political opponent.
People walk past a campaign billboard reading “April 21st. Decisive choice!” and bearing the portraits of then President Petro Poroshenko (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin, on April 15, 2019, in Lviv. During the 2019 presidential campaign, Poroshenko depicting himself as the only pro-Ukrainian candidate on the ballot. (AFP)
It is also a time-honored tactic. Kuchma in 1999 did everything to ensure that he would make it into the final round of his re-election bid against Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko, who stood no chance of being elected.
The Opposition Platform used the Medvedchuk-Kozak propaganda network to promote itself and saw a steady increase in support, finishing second in the 2019 parliamentary election.
The party was publicly criticized by Poroshenko, who ran his 2019 campaign on the platform of “protecting Ukraine from a Russian political comeback.”
At the same time, Poroshenko’s TV channels have welcomed Opposition Platform’s members for interviews.
But one of the most telling episodes of safeguarding Medvedchuk and his party came in October 2018, when parliament voted to impose sanctions against TV channels associated with Medvedchuk – and Poroshenko didn’t sign them.
Back into oblivion?
In the beginning of Zelensky’s presidency, things were going fine for Medvedchuk and his pro-Kremlin party.
Their TV channels habitually aired Kremlin’s propaganda, justifying Russia’s war against Ukraine and at the same time blaming Zelensky for its continuation. Nearly two years later, Zelensky abruptly decided to put an end to it.
In February, he signed sanctions against Medvedchuk, Kozak, and their businesses – which immediately shut down the three pro-Kremlin TV channels – NewsOne, Channel 112, and ZIK. Medvedchuk lost the diesel pipeline and his accounts got frozen.
Oleksiy Haran, professor at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, says that early on, Zelensky benefited from Medvedchuk’s presence.
“During the election campaign, Medvedchuk’s TV channels supported Zelensky and attacked Poroshenko,” he says.
Then it changed: When Zelensky showed he won’t make concessions to Russia, the channels started attacking him.
According to Haran, by taking down Medvedchuk and his party, Zelensky weakens his political competition on the Russian-speaking electoral field and simultaneously boosts his standing with the pro-Western democratic electoral field.
“Obviously there were certain political calculations,” says Haran.
Medvedchuk’s party now looks fragile.
After losing the TV channels, the party’s support has shrunk from 19% in January to 13%. The party now polls behind both Zelensky’s Servant of the People party and Poroshenko’s European Solidarity.
It’s hard to predict what will happen to Medvedchuk, according to Haran.
Even if the state really intends to prosecute Medvedchuk, the notoriously corrupt and unreformed courts can obstruct it. But is Medvedchuk on his political death bed? Haran says: “Never say never.”
