February 26, 2021

Ukrainian national security council sanctions top Russian ‘proxy’ Medvedchuk

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KYIV – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s loyal and chief point man in Ukraine, lawmaker Viktor Medvedchuk, and his spouse – Oksana Marchenko – were hit with three-year sanctions on February 19 by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC).

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed off on the restrictive measures the following day.

The imposed measures include the freezing of assets, restriction of trade operations, and a ban on the withdrawal of capital from the country.

They follow similar measures two weeks earlier that took three pro-Russian television stations off the air. Those TV stations were responsible for more than 50 percent of the disinformation and Russian propaganda seen on Ukrainian television. Those stations are also linked to Mr. Medvedchuk and are nominally owned by his fellow party member in parliament, Taras Kozak. Mr. Kozak’s common-law wife, Nataliya Lavrenyuk, was also targeted in the latest round of sanctions.

“Sanctions are imposed on assets which belong to Mr. Medvedchuk,” NSDC chief Oleksiy Danilov said. Property controlled by him and the other associates, who include five Russian citizens, would be seized, Mr. Danilov added.

Nineteen entities were also sanctioned, the most notable of which were an oil pipeline in western Ukraine tied to Mr. Medved­chuk that transports Russian oil products – mostly diesel – to Ukraine and Europe, and five aircraft controlled by companies connected with the political heavyweight, Mr. Danilov said.

Mr. Medvedchuk and other politicians in his cohort have enjoyed privileged direct flights to Moscow from Kyiv in circumvention of existing travel bans to Russia, which has waged an undeclared war against Ukraine since early 2014, killing more than 14,000 people in the east of the country.

Ms. Marchenko holds a minority stake in the popular, nationwide 1+1 channel, which is majority-owned by oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who had backed the current president’s election campaign. Ms. Marchenko’s stake in 1+1 was also frozen.

The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine tweeted in support of the measures, while reminding the public that Mr. Medvedchuk has been under U.S. sanctions since 2014 for his role “in undermining Ukraine’s security, territorial integrity, and democratic institutions” when Russia forcibly seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

The law stipulates that Ukrainians can only be sanctioned for alleged terrorism, no other exceptions apply and none of the imposed restrictive measures have been proven in court.

In September, an investigation by Schemes, a joint program of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Ukrainian First TV channel, found that a Russian oil refinery owned by Mr. Medvedchuk’s wife has been selling some of its products to U.S.-based ExxonMobil via a Swiss-registered trader. Ms. Lavrenyuk’s name is mentioned as a registrant of one of the companies tied to the refinery.

“The products are shipped by tanker from the Black Sea to Houston, Texas,” the journalistic report said.

The pro-Kremlin Opposition Platform–For Life (OPFL) party, of which Mr. Medved­chuk is a co-chairman, immediately denounced the sanctions as “political repression and the destruction of democracy” in Ukraine.

Recent polls show since the beginning of the year that Mr. Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party has been gradually losing pole position in approval ratings to OPFL.

Personally, Mr. Medvedchuk said the Ukrainian authorities have no evidence of guilt and are bent on establishing a dictatorship in the country.

“[Mr.] Zelenskyy crossed the last moral boundaries, hitting the most precious – my beloved wife Oksana Marchenko,” Mr. Medvedchuk told BBC Ukraine. “Do [Mr.] Zelenskyy’s advisers expect me to be scared? Do they really think that I will betray my principles, my country […] and run away? This is in vain. They won’t live to see this. The fight will continue.”

In turn, Ms. Marchenko said on Instagram she will enter politics in opposition to the Ukrainian president and described the sanctions as “unconstitutional and repressive.”
She furthermore called herself and her family “law-abiding people who love their country,” while saying she is joining the OPFL party, “where I see the protection of the Ukrainian people as my main task.”

About 49 percent of the adult population of Ukraine support the first round of sanctions against the Medvedchuk-affiliated TV channels, a nationwide survey by sociological firm Rating Group found on February 6-8. Forty-one percent don’t support the measures.
The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) posited that the two rounds of sanctions related to Mr. Medvedchuk might be opening up a Pandora’s Box.

In a February 22 article, the rights group wrote that “it looks very strange to allege criminal behavior without initiating criminal proceedings.”

It further added that “Maksym Tymochko, a lawyer for the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, stresses [that] sanctions are a political mechanism, but they must be framed within a legal context which complies with Ukraine’s international commitments and will not be found to have violated somebody’s rights by the European Court of Human Rights.”

The Russian president is a godfather to one of Mr. Medvedchuk’s daughters and is called a Putin “proxy” inside Ukraine by the U.S. Treasury Department.

The powerful tycoon is also known in Ukraine for being the Soviet public prosecutor of dissident Vasyl Stus, the Ukrainian poet who died in a forced labor camp on September 4, 1985. He headed former President Leonid Kuchma’s staff from June 2002 to January 2005 and is also sanctioned by Australia and Canada for his actions during Russia’s takeover of Crimea.

In 2019, Mr. Medvedchuk filed an asset declaration that stated he and his wife had an income of $11.5 million, own five buildings, nearly two dozen vehicles, including a Bentley and Maybach, as well as a collection of luxury watches and a vast antique book collection.

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