Kyiv, Europe Brief News – Viktor Medvedchuk, a famous 67-year-old Ukrainian politician who is seemingly in a close relationship with Vladimir Putin, was prosecuted with treason for allegedly providing military secrets to Russia and plundering natural resources in annexed Crimea while he was in Kyiv.
Immediately after this, he was put under house arrest which he later tried to escape. Meanwhile, Putin negatively remarked on the situation regarding the Russia-Ukraine war. Some sources have even revealed that Putin is supposedly the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter, making this occurrence seem even more suspicious.
Keeping all this in mind, Ukraine’s Security Service set out in search of Medvedchuk. The operation seemed to be successful in finding Medvedchuk by the Twitter post of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The post showed a handcuffed, pale-looking Medvedchuk in a military uniform as contrasted to the always smiling face of Medvedchuk.
Breaking. Zelensky has just announced that secret services have captured Putin’s best friend in Ukraine Viktor Medvedchuk. He had been on the run. pic.twitter.com/HT05x2PMmh
— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) April 12, 2022
This occurrence had a great impact on Ukraine’s ideological and political standing. The absence of unification in authority hampered reforms promoted corruption, and elevated Medvedchuk to the position of most potent facilitator of Moscow’s influence.
Background of Viktor Medvedchuk‘s relationship with Putin
It is said that Viktor Medvedchuk-Putin first met back in 2003 and later in a St. Petersburg church, Russian President Vladimir Putin baptized his youngest female child Darya.
Furthermore, Medvedchuk managed the election campaign of Victor Yanukovych which resulted in Yanukovych’s victory. Though, the administrators suspected Medvedchuk of cheating the votes. The ensuing triumph of the anti-Russian Viktor in a re-runoff election signaled Medvedchuk’s momentary demise from the legislative Olympus. He was not re-elected as a congressman, and his political party fared poorly in the polls.
But he started working on this issue by coming up with the plan to establish three televisions networks with several publications. Yanukovych, Medvedchuk’s old apprentice, managed to win the 2010 presidential election, but Medvedchuk was mostly ignored.
Insights relating to the following years of their relationship
He retained Putin’s main player and recovered authority after Yanukovych was expelled in 2014 by the Revolution of Dignity. He went to the Kremlin to support the nominee, Yuri Boyko, causing a sociopolitical uproar in Ukraine. Boyko finished fourth, while Zelenskyy dominated with a whopping 73 percent.
Medvedchuk’s party gained 44 seats in the 450-seat Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s lower house of parliament, in a legislative election a year later, and became the greatest fraction opposing Zelenskyy’s Public Servant party.
Medvedchuk increased the party’s media influence via his tv networks, which avoided publicly complimenting the Kremlin. However, its anchors frequently referred to Kyiv’s struggle with Russia-backed rebels as a “civil war.”
Zelenskyy blacklisted him and his closest associates in 2021, freezing their possessions and discontinuing his TV networks.
“I propose to the Russian Federation to exchange this guy of yours for our boys and our girls who are now in Russian captivity,” Zelenskyy stated in a video address that was shared on Telegram. Viktor Medvedchuk could risk about 15 years in prison if he is prosecuted and imprisoned. Zelenskyy, on the other hand, stated that he would like to exchange him for Prisoners of war in the Ukraine war.
