Medvedchuk Viktor
Date of birth: 07.08.1954
Place of birth. Education. Born in the village of Pocheta, Aban district, Krasnoyarsk Krai (Russia). In 1978, graduated from the Law Faculty of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
Career. 1972 – expediter of the Kyiv railway post office.
1978-1989 – lawyer of the Kyiv city bar association.
All related materials
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1989-1991 – head of the legal consultancy of the Shevchenko district in Kyiv.
1990-1997 – president of the Union of Lawyers of Ukraine. In 1990-1991 – member of the Board of the Union of Lawyers of the USSR from Ukraine.
1997-2002 – people's deputy of Ukraine of the II, III, and IV convocations.
In 1998-2000 – deputy speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Oleksandr Tkachenko.
In 2000-2001 – first deputy speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ivan Pliushch.
From June 2002 to January 2005 – head of the Administration of the President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma.
Several times became a member of the High Council of Justice.
Political career. According to his autobiography, Viktor Medvedchuk was never a member of the CPSU. In 1994, he became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine, led by the Chairman of the Supreme Court of Ukraine Vasily Onopenko. In 1998, after the split of the SDPU, he headed the newly formed Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united). Under Viktor Medvedchuk's leadership, in the spring of 2002, the party overcame the electoral barrier in the Verkhovna Rada elections and created its own faction.
Shortly after the SDPU(o) defeat in the 2006 elections, which ran in parliament as part of the Opposition Bloc 'NOT LIKE THIS!', he resigned as head of the 'united SDPU'.
Since 2012, chairman of the public organization All-Ukrainian public movement Ukrainian choice.
On July 28, 2018, the leader of the Ukrainian choice public movement – the right of the people Viktor Medvedchuk joined the party For Life. On November 5, 2018, Viktor Medvedchuk was elected head of the political party For Life.
On May 27, 2019, Viktor Medvedchuk was elected head of the political council Opposition Platform – For Life and head of the party's strategic council.
In the parliamentary elections of 2019, he was elected a people's deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the IX convocation from the party Opposition Platform – For Life, No. 3 on the list.
Business, wealth. Since 1991, he has headed the International Law Firm Bi.Ay.eM.
He was a member of the so-called 'Kyiv Seven' (in particular, along with others, now also former SDPU(o) leaders Hryhoriy Surkis and Bohdan Hubskyi) – a group of influential capital businessmen and politicians, in the 1990s – the first half of the 2000s accumulated multimillion-dollar assets in various sectors of the economy. One of the most famous and, according to media reports, profitable projects of the group was the Slavutich Industrial-Financial Concern. Another famous project – the Football Club Dynamo (Kyiv).
In 2008, Focus magazine ranked Viktor Medvedchuk's fortune at $460 million, placing the politician at 57th place on the list of the 130 'most influential' Ukrainians.
Views and assessments. As Mirror of the Week once wrote, 'SDPU leaders are reputed to be people who easily solve friends' problems. And just as easily create problems for competitors. It seems, without particularly choosing means. With the entrenched opinion that 'SDPU(o) is not liked by anyone', the party leaders do not argue much'.
In his time, Viktor Medvedchuk became close to President Leonid Kravchuk. After some time, following the arrival of Leonid Kuchma as head of state, he entered the orbit of the second president of Ukraine. Even as an MP, he was his advisor on tax policy and was a part of several advisory bodies under the head of state. The highlight of the politician's career (in terms of influence and opportunities) came after his appointment as head of the Presidential Administration. According to some experts' estimates, the 'grey cardinal of Kuchma' Medvedchuk surpassed his famous predecessors Oleksandr Volkov, Dmytro Tabachnyk, and Volodymyr Lytvyn.
Viktor Medvedchuk is one of the long-standing and most ardent opponents of Viktor Yushchenko. In the 2004 presidential elections, he supported the pro-government candidate Viktor Yanukovych. He became one of the fathers of the infamous 'constitutional reform' of 2004, which curtailed the powers of the head of state in favor of the parliament.
After resigning as head of the SDPU(o), the former head of Kuchma's Administration formally withdrew from big politics. However, observers allow that Viktor Medvedchuk still maintained a certain activity in the 'art of the possible' (in particular, in the direction 'Kyiv – Moscow'). According to some assumptions, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was interested in the services of the politician, who always advocated for Ukraine's rapprochement with Russia. For example, one of the reasons for such assertions was the appointment of someone allegedly close to Medvedchuk, Oleksandr Zadorozhnyi, as an advisor to the head of the Cabinet of Ministers.
Especially often and emotionally, suspicions of ties between Tymoshenko and Medvedchuk began to be voiced by high-ranking representatives of the Yushchenko presidential secretariat. In August 2008, for example, the deputy head of the secretariat Andriy Kyslynskyi stated that the Russian leadership was very carefully considering the option of supporting Yulia Tymoshenko in the presidential elections of Ukraine. And the coordination of a project for pre-election support was supposedly already entrusted to a center created in Moscow led by Viktor Medvedchuk, which also included Hryhoriy Surkis, Oleksandr Zadorozhnyi, representatives of the Party of Regions Dmytro Tabachnyk and Serhiy Kliuev.
Members of BYuT deny cooperation with the 'odious representative of Kuchma's regime'. And experts link the war between the president and the Tymoshenko Cabinet with the approach of the 2010 presidential elections, which threaten to bury Viktor Yushchenko's presidential ambitions.
An advocate of a federal structure of the state.
Euromaidan. On December 29, 2013, activists of Euromaidan organized a motor rally to Viktor Medvedchuk's house to express their protest. The activists called Viktor Medvedchuk 'the puppeteer' and directly linked his name to all the bloody events on the Euromaidan: theviolent dispersal of Euromaidan in Kyiv on November 30, the beatings of people during events near the Presidential Administration on December 1 and the storming of Euromaidan on December 11, 2013. However, no one came out to the participants of the action, and they lined up along the fence and simply knocked on it. Part of the picketers pressed against the gates, causing them to break.
Cooperation with terrorist organizations and mediation. On June 23, 2014, according to a report by OSCE, Viktor Medvedchuk represented the terrorist organizations DNR and LNR. The official representative of Ukraine refused to comment on Medvedchuk's role in the negotiation process.
From the first days of the war with Russia, Medvedchuk repeatedly expressed his desire to resolve this conflict peacefully, to begin a 'broad dialogue between Kyiv and Donbas', although he never mentioned the initiator of the military actions - the Russian Federation.
Since May 2014, Medvedchuk and Nestor Shufrych conducted negotiations with representatives of the terrorist organizations LNR and DNR to cease hostilities in Donbas. As a result, it was possible to reach an agreement on the 'beginning of dialogue' between the trilateral contact group (which includes representatives of the OSCE, Ukraine, and Russia) and the so-called 'DNR' and 'LNR'.
On June 23 and 27, an agreement was reached to introduce a ceasefire regime, which was repeatedly violated by the terrorists and therefore actually hindered the Armed Forces of Ukraine from liberating territories and defending themselves.
In June 2014, German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed appointing Medvedchuk as a mediator to ensure the activities of the Trilateral Contact Group.
Since December 20, 2014, Medvedchuk has been dealing with the issue of exchanging hostages held by terrorists for captured terrorists detained by Ukrainian military forces. By order of the leadership of the SBU, Medvedchuk was appointed as a special representative for negotiations to resolve the situation in the ATO zone in Minsk.
Since May 2015, he has been part of the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Group and carries out prisoner exchanges. Together with the mission of the Red Cross in Ukraine, he was engaged in searching for the missing. From December 2014 until early November 2016, the terrorists released 403 people.
On May 24, 2019, Viktor Medvedchuk stated that 'he sees no sense in representing the interests' of President's team Volodymyr Zelensky in negotiations with Russia, while his party has been in opposition to the head of state since his election.
Sanctions. On March 17, 2014, the United States imposed personal sanctions against a list of individuals who threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and undermine democratic institutions and processes in Ukraine. This list includes Viktor Medvedchuk. He is accused by the U.S. government of providing significant financial, material, and technological support to Yanukovych, and that he is one of the leaders of the organization 'Ukrainian choice', whose members engage in actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in Ukraine and threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
On February 19, 2021, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, chaired by President Volodymyr Zelensky, imposed sanctions against Medvedchuk, his wife Oksana Marchenko, and a number of related individuals and legal entities. The grounds – involvement in financing terrorism. Sanctions will last for three years and include, among other things, blocking the assets of Medvedchuk and Marchenko.
Criminal case for treason. On May 11, 2021, the SBU conducted a search at Medvedchuk's house and at the OPZZh office: he and his accomplice-MP from OPZZh Taras Kozak are suspected of treason, violating the rules of warfare, and attempting to plunder national resources in Ukrainian Crimea. According to investigators, both entered into a preliminary conspiracy with the authorities of the Russian Federation in 2015 to extract state-owned minerals in the Black Sea shelf. The SBU also claims that Medvedchuk sent Kozak classified data about the location of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The criminal case concerns the establishment of the Promin organization: it allegedly was supposed to recruit Ukrainians in the interests of the Russian Federation. On May 13, the Pechersk Court placed Medvedchuk under house arrest.
On February 26, 2022, the Prosecutor General's Office ordered the National Police to check the whereabouts of Medvedchuk at the address where he was under house arrest, but he was not found there.
On April 12, 2022, Viktor Medvedchuk was detained.
On April 16, 2022, the court changed the measure of restraint for Viktor Medvedchuk who fled from house arrest. Medvedchuk was sent to custody without the right to bail.
On September 21, 2022, Ukraine returned 200 soldiers from captivity in exchange for the suspect in treason Viktor Medvedchuk.
On January 10, 2023, the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he had terminated the citizenship of Ukraine Viktor Medvedchuk. On January 13, 2023, the Verkhovna Rada voted to deprive Viktor Medvedchuk of his mandate.
Awards. Doctor of Law. Academician of the Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine. Honored Lawyer of Ukraine. Full cavalier of the Order of 'For Merits'. Awarded the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise V degree.
Family. Married three times. First wife – Marina Lebedeva, second – Natalia Havryliuk (born 1952). Third wife – TV presenter Oksana Marchenko. Viktor Medvedchuk has two daughters – Irina (born 1982) from the second marriage, studied and lived in Switzerland, in 2005 she married Andriy Ryumin (candidate of sciences) and Darina (born 2004) from the third marriage. Darina – goddaughter of Vladimir Putin and Svetlana Medvedeva. Thus, Viktor Medvedchuk is a godfather of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.
Hobbies. Football.
04.08.2023.