President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine has said Viktor Medvedchuk, the leader of the public movement Ukrainian Choice — the Right of the People and a member of the For Life party, has in fact represented Russian President Vladimir Putin in talks held by the Trilateral Contact Group for Settling the Situation in Donbas (TCG).
“Let’s talk. We all understand this: de facto, Medvedchuk has been a representative of Putin at those talks,” Poroshenko told a press conference in Kyiv on December 16.
At the same time, the Ukrainian head of state said Medvedchuk has not attended meetings of the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk since last spring.
As earlier reported, on December 4, Ukraine’s representative to the TCG Yevhen Marchuk said that Medvedchuk no longer takes part in the talks in Minsk.
In an interview with BBC News Ukraine on December 11, when asked about Medvedchuk’s role Marchuk said: “As far as I am aware of, at the talks he used to be a representative of the SBU and a mediator at the level between the presidents. The SBU has recently been represented by a different person in the past few rounds of talks there.”
