Ukrainian government sanctions pro-Russian oligarch and opposition leader
The government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday announced sanctions targeting the oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, the head of Ukraine’s leading opposition party.
Medvedchuk, who has an estimated net worth of $1 billion,
has played a major role in Ukrainian politics ever since the restoration of
capitalism by the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1991. In contrast to the
anti-Russian NATO-backed right-wing government of Zelensky, Medvedchuk has maintained
close business and political contacts with the Russian oligarchy and is a
personal friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2014, he was sanctioned
by the US. Both he and his Opposition Platform–For Life party favor
reestablishing close ties with Moscow and ending the nearly seven-year-long war
in eastern Ukraine.
At a briefing last Friday, Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s secretary
of the National Security and Defense Council, announced that Medvedchuk’s
assets were also frozen and that Ukraine’s state security service (SBU) would
be carrying out an investigation of Medvedchuk’s ownership of coal mines that
are located in separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine. Danilov also accused
Medvedchuk of “financing terrorism.”
In an indication of the deep geopolitical conflicts within
the Ukrainian oligarchy, the government also announced that it would be taking
over the PrykarpatZakhidtrans oil pipeline. The pipeline carries Russian oil to
Europe and is reportedly owned by Medvedchuk through foreign intermediaries.
The sanctions against Medvedchuk are part of an ongoing
crackdown by the Zelensky government against all political opposition as the
country continues to suffer both medically and economically from the
coronavirus pandemic.
On February 2, Zelensky took the unprecedented step of
closing down three popular opposition-affiliated TV channels—112, Newsone and
ZIK—on the grounds of “national security.” While the channels are officially
owned by Taras Kozak, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and the Opposition
Platform–For Life party, the channels are reportedly financially owned by
Medvedchuk. Both Kozak and Medvedchuk also had their personal planes banned
from operating in Ukrainian airspace.
While Zelensky was elected in 2019 with an overwhelming 73
percent of the vote—a vote that above all represented a repudiation of the 2014
US and German-backed coup—just 19.8 percent of Ukrainians are willing to vote
for him now, according to a January 26 poll by the Kyiv International Institute
of Sociology (KIIS).
The same KIIS poll suggested that in a hypothetical
parliamentary election the Medvedchuk-led Opposition Platform–For Life party
would win with 20.7 percent of the vote. Zelensky’s own Servant of the People
party, which came into power in July 2019, would garner just 11.2 percent,
rendering it a fourth-place party with little chance to govern unless aligned
with another party.
The Opposition Platform–For Life party has been the largest
but not the only political target of the Ukrainian government. On February 16,
Ukraine’s SBU charged pro-Russian blogger and politician Anatoly Shariy with
“high treason” and “incitement of ethnic or racial hatred” by spreading
“Russian propaganda” in the media.
Shariy, who currently lives in Spain, is an extremely
popular blogger in Ukraine. He has made a number of important investigative
posts in recent years, uncovering far-right nationalism and anti-Semitism
within the Ukrainian state as well as ongoing corruption. Shariy’s party also
supports a negotiated settlement to end the war in eastern Ukraine, making his
party a target of the far right. Several of its leading members have been
attacked by right-wing thugs.
Seven years have now passed since the US- and EU-backed coup
in 2014 that heavily relied on fascist forces and installed an aggressively
pro-NATO section of the Ukrainian ruling class in Kiev. Like his predecessor,
Petro Poroshenko, the Zelensky government now appears headed towards collapse,
endangering US foreign policy interests in the region.
In Washington, the possible return of a Moscow-friendly
government to power in Kiev is viewed as militarily unacceptable, and the US
has fully endorsed the sanctions against Medvedchuk. The US Embassy’s page
noted on Saturday, “The US supports efforts yesterday to counter Russia’s
malign influence, in line with law, in defense of its sovereignty and
territorial integrity.”
By contrast, the Kremlin has made clear that Zelensky’s
crackdown against the pro-Russian political opposition has severely undermined
the chance for a resolution of the war in Donbas, increasing the chance for an
outbreak of full-out war between Ukraine and Russia.
The crisis of the Zelensky government and the embittered
infighting within the country’s ruling class are fueled by the coronavirus
pandemic, which has devastated both the country’s impoverished health system
and economy.
More than 26,000 Ukrainians have officially died due to
COVID-19. The country’s dilapidated hospitals and underfunded medical workers
have been overwhelmed, often reusing essential PPE and medical supplies,
including such basics as syringes.
The horrific conditions in Ukrainian hospitals and the
enormous impact of the crisis on an already deeply impoverished population are
a direct outcome of the restoration of capitalism, following the Stalinist
dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Three decades later, Ukraine is the poorest
country in Europe and the standing ground for dangerous military provocations
and war preparations by the imperialist powers against Russia. Meanwhile, the
EU and US have refused any meaningful help in getting the vaccine.
While the country’s wealthier EU allies have already had
access to a vaccine, Ukraine is just this week receiving its first 500,000
doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, despite begging both the United States and EU
for access to the vaccine for months. Under these conditions, the vaccine
distribution has become a focal point of conflicts over foreign policy within
the ruling oligarchy.
Last fall, Medvedchuk met with Putin and obtained permission
from the Russian president for Ukraine to receive Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.
More recently, he obtained a license for Biolik, a pharmaceutical company based
in eastern Ukraine, to manufacture the vaccine in Ukraine.
While the Russian government undoubtedly views the
distribution of Sputnik V within Ukraine as a chance to regain lost political
influence in the region, the vaccine itself has proven effective. On February
2, the Lancet medical journal published third-stage results of Sputnik V’s
clinical trials showing that it is one of the most effective and safest vaccines
in the world. Despite the growing medical evidence of its efficacy, on February
10 the Zelensky government officially banned its use on Ukrainian territory,
claiming that Sputnik V was part of a Russian “information war” targeting
Ukraine.
The working class can only put an end to the social and
economic catastrophe and the danger of war by intervening in the crisis on the
basis of its own class interests, independent from all factions of the ruling
oligarchy. This requires that the political lessons be drawn from the struggle
of the Trotskyist movement for an internationalist socialist perspective in
opposition to the nationalist betrayal of the October revolution of 1917 by
Stalinism.
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