Viktor Medvedchuk

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2019 Viktor Medvedchuk.jpg
Cyrillic ( Ukrainian )
Ві́ктор Володи́мирович Медведчу́к
Transl. : Viktor Volodymyrovyč Medvedčuk
Transcr. : Viktor Volodymyrovich Medvedchuk
Cyrillic ( Russian )
Ви́ктор Влади́мирович Медведчу́к
Transl .: Viktor Vladimirovyč Medvedčuk
Transcr .: Viktor Vladimirovich Medvedchuk

Viktor Medvedchuk ( Ukrainian Віктор Медведчук ; born August 7, 1954 in the Aban district in the Krasnoyarsk Territory , Russian SFSR ) is a Ukrainian politician, lawyer and oligarch .

Medvedchuk was born in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in Siberia . According to some sources, his father had been sentenced to imprisonment and subsequent exile in Siberia for collaborating with the German occupation forces or for "participating in nationalist activities". In the mid-1960s the family returned to Ukraine and settled in a village in Zhytomyr Oblast .

Viktor Medvedchuk began studying law in 1972 and worked as a lawyer in Kiev in 1979, some sources mention that Medvedchuk was said to have been an unofficial employee of the Soviet secret service KGB at the time. As the appointed lawyer of the poet Wassyl Stus , he demanded a higher sentence than the public prosecutor.

In the early 1990s Medvedchuk rose to become one of the most influential men in Ukraine, and his business partners included the brothers Ihor and Hryhorij Surkis . He was one of the leaders of the so-called "Kiev clan", a network of several large Ukrainian industrialists.

From 1997 to 2002 Medvedchuk was a member of the Verkhovna Rada , the Ukrainian parliament. Since 1998 he was president of the United Social Democratic Party SDPU . At times he was deputy chairman of the Rada parliament and chairman of the Ukrainian Bar Association.

After the parliamentary elections in 2002, Medvedchuk was appointed head of the presidential administration of Leonid Kuchma . In this position he was considered one of the most powerful men in Ukraine at the time, who was ascribed a great influence on Kuchma. Before and during the Orange Revolution he was one of the opponents of the presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko .

After Yushchenko's electoral victory, Medvedchuk was investigated for abuse of power and money laundering, with no judicial conviction. Medvedchuk initially largely withdrew from politics, until March 2010 he was a member of the Supreme Council of Justice of Ukraine. In 2012, Medvedchuk founded the political movement Ukrainian Election (Український вибір), which speaks out against the rapprochement between Ukraine and the EU and in favor of extensive economic integration with Russia. Medvedchuk is considered a personal friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin . During the Ukraine crisis in 2014 , Medvedchuk took on the role of mediator between the interim government in Kiev and the insurgents in eastern Ukraine.

In connection with the Crimean crisis , the United States and Canada imposed sanctions on him on March 17, 2014 in the form of an entry ban and an asset freeze. A year later, in August 2015, it became known that Medvedchuk had bought the mega-yacht Royal Romance for 214 million euros despite these sanctions .

Medvedjuk remained Ukraine's main pro-Russian politician. He was also involved in prisoner releases. Medvedschuk was able to make big profits during the ongoing war in Ukraine from 2014, but according to an assessment by Serhiy Leschchenko , his political influence tended towards zero in the spring of 2019, he was even described as a "poisonous" player, where everything he touched would be unpopular.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://forum.pravda.com.ua/archive/read.php?9,3575495  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / forum.pravda.com.ua  
  2. ^ Court processes against journalists and mass media. Human Rights in Ukraine, December 29, 2003, accessed on February 6, 2014 (English, from: "Silski Visti", No. 130, November 6, 2003).
  3. ↑ Internet Lexicon DIE WELT | zugriff = 2015-12-29 Stus' son, Dimitro Stus, called him his father's murderer.
  4. ^ Paul Flückiger: Ukraine: The clique economy. In: Zeit Online . January 4, 2005, accessed February 6, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Eberhard Schneider: Ukraine - split between East and West. Federal Agency for Political Education , February 20, 2007, accessed on February 6, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Medvedchuk questioned by prosecutors on March 30 as a witness in Kuchma case. In: Kjiv Post . March 31, 2011, accessed February 6, 2014 .
  7. ↑ Biography on the website of the Supreme Council of Justice
  8. ↑ Ukraine as a Federation: Curse or Blessing? , Website of Deutsche Welle from February 1, 2014. Putin is said to be the godfather of his daughter. Putin's husband in Kiev in Neue Zürcher Zeitung from June 24, 2014
  9. ↑ Ukraine mediator Medvedchuk: "There is no peace with the military" , interview with Medvedchuk at SPON from July 16, 2014
  10. ↑ Anna Mostovych: Putin's point man in Ukraine buys 214 million yacht . euromaidanpress.com. Retrieved May 26, 2016.
  11. ↑ INTERVIEW "You don't have to give back the territory, you have to give back the people" , Novaya Gazeta, February 14, 2018
  12. ↑ Viktor Medvedchuk: "I am creative for oppression" , Novaya Gazeta, February 8, 2019
  13. ↑ "Trump breaks a good system in the US and Zelensky breaks a bad one" , Novaya Gazeta, March 22, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Medvedchuk, Viktor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Medvedchuk, Viktor Wolodimirovich (full name); Ві́ктор Володи́мирович Медведчу́к (Ukrainian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ukrainian politician, lawyer and businessman
DATE OF BIRTH 7th August 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Aban District , Krasnoyarsk Region , Russian SFSR