Leading pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Choice NGO and the main negotiator in the prisoner exchange process, may have been behind the coup attempt allegedly being prepared by Ukrainian lawmaker Nadiya Savchenko and war mediator Volodymyr Ruban, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko claimed on the Svoboda Slova political talk show on March 26.
Not only Medvedchuk himself but also Ukrainian Choice has been under the close scrutiny of Ukrainian prosecutors for a more than a year, Lutsenko said.
“We have some questions about Ukrainian Choice’s activity as a center for anti-Ukrainian propaganda,” Lutsenko said.
Two weeks before Ukraine’s SBU security service arrested Savchenko on March 22 on charges of plotting to carry out an attack against the Verkhovna Rada and civilians in the center of Kyiv, Ukrainian military prosecutors liquidated “several anti-Ukrainian cells”, Lutsenko added.
“Under Moscow’s guidance and for Moscow’s money, (cells) in Dnipro, Kharkiv, Lviv, Kyiv and Mykolaiv oblasts, were plotting sabotage attacks,” Lutsenko said.
“Ukrainian Choice, headed by Medvedchuk, could be the manager of all these (sabotage) actions,” Lutsenko added.
The Ukrainian Choice press service described Lutsenko’s suspicions as baseless, cheap insinuations in a message published on the NGO’s website on March 27.
Medvedchuk failed to provide any comments to the Kyiv Post before this article was published.
Effective man
Medvedchuk’s case is more serious, Lutsenko said, as prosecutors are investigating possible connections between Medvedchuk, Savchenko and Ruban – who are both now accused of plotting sabotage, mass murder and violent unrest in Kyiv.
Savchenko and Ruban have previously denied having any personal connections with Medvedchuk, but they have praised his work in securing prisoner exchanges.
However, so has President Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko described Medvedchuk as a most effective negotiator during a press conference on Feb. 28.
“I will cooperate with anybody who will bring at least one Ukrainian prisoner home,” Poroshenko said.
Poroshenko said that it was Valentyn Nalivaychenko, the former head of the Security Service of Ukraine, who appointed Medvedchuk to the humanitarian subgroup on prisoner exchanges.
But Nalivaychenko told the Ukrainska Pravda news website on Feb. 28, it was Poroshenko’s idea to appoint the controversial politician, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as the main person for negotiating prisoner exchanges with the Kremlin.
“We were trying to use different communication channels in the military, the church. Medvedchuk was the most effective choice. Why? Because Putin himself makes the decisions when it comes to releasing our prisoners, not the church or the Kremlin proxies in the Donbas,” Poroshenko said.
Mastermind
Apparently, Medvedchuk could be effective on several fronts at once.
“We clearly understand that even if Ruban and Savchenko had succeeded in turning a special forces unit (to treason), they couldn’t have acted independently of a more dangerous overall plan,” Lutsenko said.
“And we’re still looking for the mastermind of (the plan),” Lutsenko said.
The prosecutor general said he personally believed that rallies held in Kyiv calling for Poroshenko’s impeachment in February and March, and an attempt by supporters of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to occupy Zhovtnevy Palace in December could have been parts of the “same plan.”
The prosecutor general also said he believed that there was a Kremlin-backed plan to change the government in Ukraine.
“(Savchenko’s) terror attack in the center of Kyiv would have been followed by a Russian military offensive and in the end – the return of (fugitive Ukrainian President) Viktor Yanukovych,” Lutsenko said.
He offered no evidence to back up his claims.
