A few months ago, Ukrainians learned shocking news: A delegation of Ukrainian members of parliament visited Moscow. It was a plot that allowed Russian propaganda-spreading TV channels to show that among Ukrainian politics there are supporters of reconciliation with Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, who are behind the bloody war in the Donbas and the illegal occupation of Crimea.
This group was headed by Viktor Medvedchuk, Putin’s proxy and close friend who has faced U.S. sanctions since March 17, 2014, for violating Ukrainian sovereignty. Specifically, the U.S. blames him for his activities as leader of Ukrainian Choice, “a group through which he has been stirring conflict.”
However, few people know that the Russian-born Medvedchuk, 65, has rapidly increased his economic, media and political influence thanks to the covert support of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who never tires of declaring his commitment to the European Union and NATO.
It was during Poroshenko’s rule from 2014 to 2019 that Medvedchuk’s complete political rehabilitation took place.
Medvedchuk left politics in 2006 after he failed to win the parliamentary elections with his Opposition Bloc “Ne Tak!” (“Not Yes,” a reference to the slogan of the pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko’s winning campaign motto “Yushchenko — Tak!” or “Yes to Yushchenko!”)
Poroshenko revives Medvedchuk
After the defeat, Medvedchuk kept a relatively low profile for years. It was only under Poroshenko that his political revival began, based on economic and media assets gained during the last administration.
Despite their seeming ideological opposition, Poroshenko and Medvedchuk are not strangers to each other but have a history of relations that goes back more than 20 years. It started in 1997 when they both ran for parliament on the ballot of the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (United), known also as “the oligarchs’ party.” After they entered parliament, they found themselves on the party’s presidium. It didn’t last long, and soon Poroshenko, with the help of the presidential administration, formed a separate group called Solidarnist (Solidarity).
It is the old history of relations between Poroshenko and Medvedchuk that explains their rapprochement after Poroshenko was elected president in 2014. Medvedchuk’s main asset is his family ties with Russia: Putin is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter, who was baptized in the grand St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The girl’s godmother is Svetlana Medvedeva, the wife of Dmitry Medvedev, the former president and prime minister of Russia.
Following the elections in 2014, then-President Poroshenko engaged Medvedchuk into building a system of informal contacts in Russia. Medvedchuk received serious business preferences from Poroshenko for his role as a moderator.
Medvedchuk businesses flourish under Poroshenko
Paradoxically, when the U.S. imposed personal sanctions against Medvedchuk, his business flourished in Ukraine and received the “green light” in all directions. Subsequently, the money was used to build a media-political project Opposition Platform For Life, through which Medvedchuk is trying to make a full-fledged return and rule Ukraine again.
Medvedchuk and money
The first scheme that Medvedchuk got involved in after Poroshenko’s election featured coal — namely, supplies of anthracite.
Arida Global Limited, a company registered in Hong Kong, allegedly bought coal in Africa and supplied it to Ukraine’s Centrenergo thermal power plants. It was a disguise to pre-sent coal smuggled from Russian-occupied territories of eastern Ukraine as South African. The authorities at the time — and these were the first years of Poroshenko’s rule — turned a blind eye to what was happening and pretended to believe the legend of the coal’s African origin.
Another area of interest for Medvedchuk back then was the diesel fuel market. In order to gain an advantage over competitors, Medvedchuk has set a goal to seize control of the PrykarpatWestTrans oil pipeline which goes across Ukraine. The ownership of the pipe-line had been a matter of dispute between Ukraine and Russia until a Ukrainian court ruled that it belongs to Ukraine in 2014. But in 2015, a court in the western Ukrainian city of Rivne overturned the decision, returning the pipeline to Russia’s state-controlled company Transneft.
As evidence, the Ukrainian court accepted letters from the Russian government written in the 1990s. Soon after that, the pipeline ended up in the ownership of a Swiss company associated with Medvedchuk.
The judge who ruled in favor of Russia was Yaroslava Gudzenko. Her fate is quite interesting. A few years after this “historical” decision, Gudzenko successfully underwent all the necessary vetting procedures of the Higher Qualification Commission of Judges and the Higher Council of Justice — institutions controlled by then-President Poroshenko. In December 2018, Poroshenko appointed her as a judge with an indefinite term.
The situation is particularly cynical because in other cases when it comes to judges fighting corruption, it can take the presidential administration many months to approve their appointments.
As a result, a Swiss company associated with Medvedchuk — International Trading Partners — bought the diesel pipeline from Russia’s Transneft. Ukraine’s Antimonopoly Committee sanctioned the purchase in December 2015, with all nine members of the committee approving the deal unanimously. By that time the committee was under complete control of Poroshenko’s administration.
Since 2016, a little-known company called Proton Energy has been supplying the diesel fuel to Ukraine using this pipeline. The company is owned by Israeli citizen and a Swiss resident Nisan Moiseev. He was spotted arriving in Kyiv together with Medvedchuk on his private jet from Moscow in 2017. They were filmed kissing goodbye.
The share of Medvedchuk’s associates in the diesel fuel market has soared rapidly. Whereas at the end of 2016 the share of Proton Energy stood at about 12%, in 2018 it grew to 38%.
In addition to diesel fuel, during the presidency of Poroshenko, the structures associated with Medvedchuk reached a critical influence on the market of liquefied petroleum gas — their share went from zero to more than 30 percent.
SBU’s helping hand
It all became possible thanks to the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, that ousted Medvedchuk’s competitors. The dirty work was done by Pavlo Demchyna, the second-in-command at the SBU, who was loyal to Poroshenko. He opened investigations into the alleged financing of terrorism by other petroleum gas traders. Later the SBU ordered the energy customs to stop the customs clearance of imported fuel due to the alleged presence of “poisonous and potent substances” in the tanks.
In the end, Medvedchuk’s rivals fell under sanctions in Ukraine. The list of sanctioned companies was signed by Demchyna personally and was accepted for execution by Ste-pan Kubiv, then the first deputy prime minister, appointed on Poroshenko’s quota. The SBU bullied these companies for four months, and no one ended being charged. Poroshenko promoted Demchyna in the SBU ranks.
Meanwhile, Medvedchuk’s associates entered the market of retail of fuel in Ukraine. The same members of the Anti-Monopoly Committee that approved his purchase of the pipe-line, sanctioned the purchase by Proton Energy of a chain of gas stations from Russia’s Rosneft. The chain is now operating under the brand Glusco.
Medvedchuk television
In addition to business, Medvedchuk’s associates during Poroshenko’s presidency have acquired several powerful media assets, and have been funding them by the money of unknown origin.
Medvedchuk’s entry into the media market was accelerated thanks to help from the government.
In the fall of 2018, Taras Kozak, a lawmaker of the Opposition Platform from Medvedchuk’s closest circle, bought the NewsOne TV channel. A few months later, in December 2018, Kozak bought another station, Channel 112.
Channel 112 was created at the time of President Viktor Yanukovych by people from the entourage of Vitaliy Zakharchenko, Yanukovych’s interior minister. It was done by obtaining five licenses for five different legal entities for regional broadcasting. However, they created an all-Ukrainian broadcaster, which was an obvious violation of license conditions. Besides, the channel received licenses for entertainment broadcasting, while it’s been providing information broadcasting only.
Still, Channel 112 was never stripped of its license. And when this issue was raised in Poroshenko’s time, in 2018, the head of the TV Regulation Department Yuriy Artemenko, who is close with Poroshenko, simply buried the issue. He cited a letter from the SBU as a pretext to withdraw it from the agenda.
As a lawmaker at the time, I requested a copy of that letter and received it a few months later. It turned out that its content completely contradicted Artemenko’s words — as the SBU urged to investigate the channel’s activity and not to renew their licenses.
The price of this unspoken agreement between Poroshenko and Medvedchuk became evident during the 2019 presidential elections. Controlled by Medvedchuk’s people, Channel 112 played along with Poroshenko’s interests. After Poroshenko’s defeat, Medvedchuk finalized his third media purchase — TV channel ZIK.
Medvedchuk and politics
Although Medvedchuk played an important role in Yanukovych’s entourage and was his communicator with Putin during the tragic turn of the EuroMaidan Revolution, he never was in the focus of the law enforcement agencies who prosecuted other top allies of the fugitive president.
Moreover, it turns out that even though Medvedchuk has not been formally active in politics for many years, he preserved influence on Ukrainian courts. I discovered it when he filed a lawsuit against me, suing for writing that his business flourished due to Poroshenko’s assistance.
All the lawsuits related to Medvedchuk’s interests surprisingly end up with the same judge in Kyiv’s Pechersky District — Oleksiy Sokolov.
In addition to the lawsuit against me, Sokolov had previously was assigned Medvedchuk’s lawsuit against lawmaker Volodymyr Ariev and an appeal to open criminal proceedings against Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe journalist Mykhailo Tkach for film-ing his arrival by a private jet from Moscow — which Medvedchuk claimed was a violation of his privacy. The last two cases were won by Medvedchuk. My case is still under consideration. After I publicly raised concerns about Sokolov’s possible bias, my case was transferred to a different judge.
Last summer Medvedchuk returned to the Ukrainian parliament — after a 17-year-break — where he served as first deputy speaker many years ago. The party he leads, the Opposition Platform For Life, took second place in the 2019 parliamentary election, receiving 13 percent of the general vote.
They are in opposition to the current government of President Volodymyr Zelensky but sometimes lend votes to the ruling faction — like when the parliament voted to appoint Maksym Stepanov as health minister in late March. Stepanov then became a frequent guest on Medvedchuk’s TV channels.
Medvedchuk himself regularly visits Moscow and acts as the main lobbyist for Ukraine’s surrender to the Kremlin under the terms of the Minsk peace agreement. Poroshenko, meanwhile, presents himself as a fierce critic of this solution to the war — all the while having a strong tacit union with its backer, Medvedchuk.
The revival of Medvedchuk in Ukraine’s media, politics, and business spheres wouldn’t have been possible without the assistance of Poroshenko. Medvedchuk has been concentrating money and media with the aim of taking over the power in Ukraine and, potentially, changing the country’s geopolitical course — returning Ukraine in Russia’s orbit. In politics, Medvedchuk gained a second life during the years of Poroshenko’s rule.
Poroshenko was replaced by Zelensky, who declared that he wanted to clear Ukrainian politics of the influence of oligarchs.
Solving the puzzle of Medvedchuk will be one of his toughest challenges because any attempts to take him down will lead to a reaction from Moscow. Putin demonstrated that he was ready to defend his friend when he accused Ukraine’s authorities of persecuting opposition politicians, such as Medvedchuk.
But limiting Medvedchuk’s influence on the media and petroleum market is critically important for Ukraine’s national security. Medvedchuk is Kremlin’s Trojan horse in Ukrainian politics. The success of Zelensky’s presidency will depend on whether he can solve this problem.
Sergii Leshchenko is a Kyiv Post columnist, investigative journalist, and former member of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.
