Medvedchuk, Poroshenko meeting regularly and secretly, media say

23 November 2018

Viktor Medvedchuk, among the heads of Ukraine’s leading Russian-oriented parties, has been regularly visiting the Presidential Administration building in secret in recent months, also meeting with the president at his home, according to the Skhemy (Schemes) news program, produced by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Its journalists have been monitoring the president’s meetings for the last four months, during which attempts were made to hide the presence of Medvedchuk’s automobile retinue. In the last week of October, for example, Medvedchuk and Poroshenko met with each other twice, once in the administration building and once at the president’s home. “In this situation, it’s best for the president to come out and clearly explain what they’re talking about,” said journalist Maksym Kamenev. “He has positioned himself as a patriot, yet these contacts with Medvedchuk create great dissonance.”

 

In response to the Skhemy report, the Presidential Administration released a statement acknowledging the meetings, denying any business ties between them and stressing Poroshenko has been meeting with Medvedchuk to discuss the situation with war prisoners from the war in Donbas. Medvedchuk serves as the special representative of the Security Service of Ukraine on releasing war prisoners at the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk. The president expressed his discontent with the process of releasing prisoners being delayed by the Kremlin and met with Medvedchuk “exclusively to move this issue from its standstill.” The president doesn’t share Medvedchuk’s political views and is willing to meet with anyone to free Ukrainian prisoners, the statement said. As the Skhemy report pointed out however, the prisoner exchange process has already been blocked by Russia, according to Iryna Gerashchenko, among Ukraine’s leading negotiators at the Minsk talks.

 

Zenon Zawada: It’s quite suspicious for someone as closely related to Russian President Putin as Medvedchuk to be meeting so intensely and intimately with Poroshenko, even at his own home. Putin is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter and Medvedchuk has promoted Putin’s policies in Ukraine for more than a decade. Medvedchuk is also political council chair of the newly launched Opposition Platform For Life party, which is fielding Yuriy Boyko as its presidential candidate.

 

As the Skhemy report acknowledged, Boyko is Poroshenko’s ideal opponent in the second-round runoff of the presidential elections. So all this implies that the president could be colluding with Boyko and Medvedchuk to cooperate during the elections, and even provide for Poroshenko’s re-election (in exchange for business preferences afterwards).

 

In all, this news report hurts the president’s image. It lends more credence to suspicions that Poroshenko has secret agreements with Putin (possibly through Medvedchuk), and that Poroshenko is colluding with Boyko and Medvedchuk for the elections to prevent Tymoshenko from becoming president. Tymoshenko’s campaign is sure to use the Skhemy report to continue arguing that it’s truly Poroshenko who has closer ties to the Kremlin than she does.