PODCAST
EXCLUSIVE
Kyiv Post columnist and ex-member of parliament Sergii Leshchenko discusses his front cover opinion “How Poroshenko Saved Medvedchuk – And Kremlin Propaganda” Full transcript below.
How Poroshenko Saved Medvedchuk – And Kremlin Propaganda
Welcome to the Kyiv Post Podcast, where you can tune in to stories that give you a deeper understanding of Ukraine.
I’m your host Elina Kent. I’m a multimedia producer and lifestyle journalist here at the Kyiv Post.
This week’s podcast focuses on former Ukrainian lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko’s op-ed piece called “How Poroshenko Saved Medvedchuk – and Kremlin Propaganda.”
Last week’s podcast covered President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ban on three pro-Russian TV channels in Ukraine.
Zelensky shut down Taras Kozak’s media empire, a pro-Russian lawmaker representing the 44-member Opposition Platform – For Life faction in Parliament, and is likely only the nominal owner of the lucrative media empire, while the real owner is believed to be the party leader Viktor Medvedchuk, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The three TV channels–ZIK, NewsOne, Channel 112–are accused of actively echoing Russian propaganda and received 5% of Ukrainian TV viewership in 2019. The TV stations had also been among the most-watched news channels in Ukraine.
We are joined today by Sergii Leshchenko who wrote the story. He is a former member of Ukraine’s parliament, serving from October 2014 as part of ex-President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc. Welcome Sergii.
Leshchenko: Hello
Kent: So let’s start from the beginning.
The story started in 2018, even earlier. It started when President Petro Poroshenko suddenly decided to let Mr. Medvedchuk, who is a very close ally of Vladimir Putin, increase his business and political role in Ukraine. When President Poroshenko was in power, he let Mr. Medvedchuk take control over the diesel supply of the Ukrainian market by taking control of a special pipeline that was part of the Soviet oil product supply system. And in 2017, it was the decision of the Ukrainian court which led Medvedchuk to take control of this pipeline. So Medvedchuk had non-stop access to money to increase his political role. He started to buy channel by channel. In 2018, when Poroshenko was president, Medvedchuk took over two channels, Channel 112 and NewsOne.
It’s widely believed that these pro-Kremlin TV channels were meant to spread misinformation and false narratives in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian parliament decided to vote on sanctioning these channels, which was quite a surprising decision for parliament. Usually, the Ukrainian parliament would not intervene here, instead the responsibility would lie with the National Security and Defense Council as a governing body, and the Security Service of Ukraine as a special body.
Both of these institutions themselves have enough power to sanction any institution, organizations or individual with no request from Parliament.
That’s why I was surprised by the complication from parliament, why did we vote for this?
Now I understand it was an attempt of Poroshenko to have leverage on these TV channels, and help him in the upcoming presidential elections. And all these processes took five months from voting of Parliament to the decision of the Security Council to imposing the sanctions on Russian and pro-Russian individuals. And most surprising was the discussion of imposing these sanctions after the request of Parliament, but at the very last moment it was removed from the sanctions list. My understanding is that it was a tricky game of that time, one side to have a permanent and positive presence on the channels of Medvedchuk and the other side to blackmail Medvedchuk saying, “If you don’t do this for me I can sanction your channels.” To make the story short, it sounds like this.
Medvedchuk and Poroshenko actually share a long history together. In 1998, they were both members of the same Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united). They spent more than 20 years working together. At times they were opponents, but when Poroshenko was elected president in 2014, Medvedchuk started to increase his presence in Ukraine both politically and in the business sphere.
Why did that happen? Why did Medvedchuk increase his role? Maybe because Putin made this a precondition for negotiations, I don’t know. One day it went too far. To be just a representative of Ukraine or Minsk negotiations of the peace keeping processes, is one story. If you let this person increase presence on the market of fuel, diesel, or liquid petrol gas or coal supply, then it’s another story. We can say that Poroshenko has no explanation on why he did this. And after the channels became part of the Medvedchuk empire, it created a huge room for him to impose his political role. And as for today, he has the second biggest political group in Parliament, and before last month he controlled three main news TV channels with non-stop propaganda on air. At the same time, Poroshenko had a good moment to ban the channels but he never did. And now he is trying to present himself as the main player to protect Ukraine from Russia’s influence, but reality shows this differently.
Channel 112 is a channel created by the closest ally of ousted president Viktor Yanukovych, Mr. Zakharchenko, who fled from Ukraine to Russia together with Yanukovych.
Vitaly Zakharchenko lived in Moscow and had no way to come back to Ukraine, but at the same time he was the owner of a quite effective TV channel and he was looking for the best solution for himself, and people directed by Poroshenko started to negotiate. And I know at least four names who were engaged in these negotiations and were successful, and there are records, when the proxy of Zakharchenko negotiated with the proxy of Mr. Poroshenko, and it is available online to watch. One of the preconditions of these negotiations was to ban one of the vocal critic’s voices against Poroshenko at the time at Channel 112 – Mr. Oleg Lyashko, the leader of the Radical Party. Finally, Channel 112 was sold to Mr. Medvedchuk in the end of 2018, before the channel was transferred from people to his close friends in Russia. It was a two-step operation. Immediately after Medvedchuk’s people joined Channel 112, it changed the program, the political views there – sympathies, the blacklist was implemented and became more pro-Russian day by day.
And as of today, it’s the most clear example of fake news and propaganda information tools which can be analyzed even from an academic point of view.
Now that President Zelensky has banned these pro-Russian TV channels, it’s possible that we might see an increase in his political support.
At the same time it’s not enough. I believe Medvedchuk will continue this game and he will find other channels to be present in. We have to be careful about this because Medvedchuk had very powerful financial support from Russia to implement this agenda, and if he has no TV channels to continue this it will increase the question from Russian proxies, “What did you do with our money?” That’s why he will continue to do this from a business side of view, and try to destabilize the political situation in Ukraine to provoke early parliamentary elections. In general, Medvedchuk is a pain in the ass of Ukraine for sure.
What’s going to be next I believe needs to be investigated how the business assets came to Medvedchuk’s hands and how he takes money from Russia to invest them in Ukrainian tools of propaganda and business influence.
That was Sergii Leshchenko providing further analysis on his op-ed piece “How Poroshenko Saved Medvedchuk – And Kremlin Propaganda.”
Thank you for your attention. And yes, sometimes Ukrainain politics is more complicated than it sounds, from a foreigners perspective, it’s easy to make black and white labels. But in reality, some people declare different views, but in reality they play together for the best profits of each other. And surprising for Poroshenko and Medvedchuk, they are the best opponents; they can destabilize the situation more and more and accumulation of support more and more because of radicalization. I think it will be a quite difficult time for Poroshenko to explain what happened in 2018, and why Medvedchuk became so powerful in Ukraine this time.
That was this week’s episode of the Kyiv Post podcast. I’m your host Elina Kent. You can subscribe to our podcasts on all streaming platforms and follow along on our website. Stay safe, stay home, and subscribe to the Kyiv Post.
