The wife of Viktor Medvedchuk, sanctioned leader of Ukraine’s opposition party
In an echo of Belarusian politics, Oksana Marchenko, the
wife of the sanctioned Ukrainian Rada leader of the pro-Russian Opposition
Platform – For Life Viktor Medvedchuk, says she will go into politics for
"the protection of the Ukrainian people,” Interfax Ukraine reported on
February 22.
"Until yesterday I was the wife and the mother of his
[Medvedchuk's] children. But you forced me to take the political weapon in
order to stand beside my husband and work towards our common goal as a single
front. Now you're getting not only Medvedchuk, but also Marchenko, although I
did not aspire to go into politics. You left me no choice. Today, I'm joining
the Opposition Platform - For Life party, where I see the protection of the
Ukrainian people as my main task," Marchenko said in a video address
published on her YouTube channel.
At the same time, she described her and her husband
Medvedchuk as "law-abiding citizens" and "the future of
Ukraine."
Medvedchuk has attempted to hit back by launching an
impeachment process in the Rada against Zelenskiy, but as the Opposition
Platform For Life does not have enough votes the initiative is expected to
fail.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has launched an
attack on his political opponents with a series of sanctions that have frozen
some of their assets and closed down their media channels.
The government imposed sanctions on the media assets of
Medvedchuk earlier this month. Medvedchuk was an eminence grise in the
Ukrainian government as the head of the presidential administration under the
second president, Leonid Kuchma, and is also a personal friend of Russian
President Vladimir Putin. As bne IntelliNews reported, he also is a business
partner of oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, owning a quarter of Kolomoisky’s media
empire.
Zelenskiy accused Medvedchuk of being backed by the Russian
government in July last year and Medvedchuk meets regularly with Putin in
Moscow.
Zelenskiy's campaign against his political opposition and
the oligarchs is partly inspired by his falling popularity and that of his
party at the polls, after he has largely failed to deliver on campaign promises
to end corruption.
It is also an attempt to deal with “The Oligarch Problem”
that is plaguing most of the countries of the Former Soviet Union (FSU).
Recently Ukraine’s prosecutor-general also launched an
investigation into the former managers of PrivatBank, who are accused of
looting the bank and leaving it with a $5bn hole in its balance sheet that led
to its nationalisation in 2016 that followed a bne IntelliNews investigation
“Privat investigations” that exposed a network of fraudulent related party
lending. The former head of the bank was prevented from leaving the country
this week on a private jet by the general prosecutor.
And there is an attempt to eject Kolomoisky from the
structures within the national gas company Naftogaz; acting Energy Minister,
and one of the few honest reformers left in Ukraine’s government, Yuriy
Vitrenko sent a letter on February 12 to PM Denys Shmyhal suggesting the
replacement of the supervisory board and top management of Naftogaz to isolate
its subsidiary Ukrnafta, in which Kolomoisky is a major shareholder.
Marchenko is the ultimate beneficiary of Bolvik Ventures
Ltd, an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands, which holds a 10%
minority stake in the Kolomoisky’s 1+1 TV channel (TOV Teleradiocompaniya
Studio 1+1), InformNapalm reports.
She is also the registered owner of the natural gas
producing company on the Crimean shelf seized by Russia, as well as many large
companies that were previously known as controlled by Kolomoisky and his Privat
Group that received new shareholders in 2020 via Cyprus offshore companies
beneficially owned by Marchenko.
According to the Ukrainian constitution, only citizens that
have participated in acts of terrorism can be sanctioned. The National Security and Defence Council’s
decision to impose sanctions on Medvedchuk and his wife is based on documents
and videos provided by the SBU that “testify to the illegal terrorist
activities of these persons,” NSDC Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said in comments
as cited by Interfax Ukraine.
"I will not reveal a big secret, and this is open
information: that as far as 14 kilometres from our border, on the territory of
the Russian Federation, there is one of the oil refineries owned by Medvedchuk
together with his wife, and by [Medvedchuk’s business partner Taras] Kozak, also
together with his wife. And supplies of oil materials are carried out to the
territory of terrorists who kill our fighters. Therefore, there is nothing
surprising. We have enough evidence that it is a terrorist group that
deliberately finances and helps Russia-led forces," said Danilov in a
televised interview.
Comments
Post a Comment