“A special operation has been carried out thanks to the SBU. Well done!” These are the words used by Volodymyr Zelensky to congratulate the Ukrainian intelligence services on the capture of Viktor Medvedchuk on Tuesday, April 12. The photo, posted on Instagram, reveals a man who seems lost, looking pale and looking away from the lens. Sitting on a chair and handcuffed, he is presented as a major war prize. And for good reason, this close friend of Vladimir Putin, deputy and businessman charged with “high treason”, had fled in the first hours of the war, on February 24.
This Monday, April 18, the oligarch reappeared in a video published by the Ukrainian security services. Dressed in a black sweatshirt and seated at a table, he addresses the camera to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. His request: “to be exchanged for the defenders of Mariupol and its inhabitants”. For its part, Russian public television broadcast calls from British prisoners asking Boris Johnson to negotiate their release against that of Viktor Medvedchuk.
David Dalton, a researcher at the School of Slavic and East European Studies at University College London, sees this arrest as a way of curbing pro-Russian thinking in the country and directly affecting Vladimir Putin. It details the influence that the elites gravitating around the Kremlin had on the “construction and development” of the Ukrainian oligarchy. While specifying “that the Medvedchuk case should not be generalized”, convinced that Ukraine enjoys the support of its elites.
L’Express: Who is Viktor Medvedchuk?
David Dalton: Medvedchuk is a former lawyer who would become an energy and agriculture magnate in the 1990s. the Kremlin, the Russian elites and in particular Vladimir Putin. This makes him an oligarch for almost twenty-five years within the “kyiv clan”, in which he is considered one of the leaders of the group. This is important, because it is the clan bringing together the most powerful oligarchs in the country, just ahead of two other networks: that of Donetsk and Dnipro.
By posting the photo of Medvedchuk in handcuffs on Instagram, what message does Zelensky want to convey?
This take is important and Zelensky knows it. He is fully aware that with such a capture he can go directly to Vladimir Putin, because Medvedchuk was still one of the only Ukrainian oligarchs with strong ties to the Kremlin. He is also one of the highest pro-Russian figures in Ukraine and rallied behind him those Ukrainians who believed that Donbass and Crimea should belong to Russia – who are fewer in number today.
Volodymyr Zelensky also does this to glorify Ukrainian forces who show courage and stand their ground against the Russian invader. And finally, to say “we got it before you”, because the Russian forces must certainly have had the mission of finding Medvedchuk, given his links with Vladimir Putin and the former USSR.
What links are we talking about?
In Ukraine, he is considered Putin’s closest figure. He would even be, according to the words of the Russian president, the godfather of one of his daughters, which testifies to a strong bond between the two men. Moreover, the oligarchic network to which Medvedchuk belongs benefited from this privileged relationship and from a kind of protection, at least until his recent arrest.
Finally, we can also speak of its forged links with the former Soviet security apparatus, which we know is so important in the eyes of Vladimir Putin. One moment in particular reminds us of the importance Medvedchuk attaches to the former Soviet regime. While he was the defense lawyer for a dissident Ukrainian poet, Vassyl Stous, during the days of the former USSR, Medvedchuk would later declare that his client deserved the punishment he received, c that is, being sent to a Soviet labor camp where he died in 1985. In short, he is widely seen in Ukraine as working in the interests of another country: Russia.
More generally, what are Medvedchuk’s interests in Russia?
Medvedchuk is traditionally the link between the Russian and Ukrainian elites. His businesses, his fortune, his place in politics… He owes almost everything to his relations with russian oligarchs. But he is not the only one to have benefited from this support, it is only one case among many others. One could even describe the Ukrainian oligarchy, since its birth, as the joint creation of Ukrainian and Russian elites, based on financial ties.
Because few know it, but the elites of each country have often worked together, in particular on the sale of energy resources, such as oil and gas. This allowed them to divide the production costs, but above all to share the pieces of the cake. All this without ever exposing their relationship. But these ties have weakened since the Ukrainian revolution of 2014. Only a few Ukrainian oligarchs still have interests in Russia. We can notably mention Dmytro Firtash, co-owner of RosUkrEnergo, a 50% subsidiary of the Russian gas giant Gazprom and of course the main interested party, Viktor Medvedtchouk.
Listening to you, it seems difficult to differentiate between the Russian oligarchy and the Ukrainian oligarchy. Are there differences from one country to another?
In both Russia and Ukraine, most are leaders of large corporations who seized economic power in the 1990s. Both sides have the same objective: to influence the country’s politics in order to secure their economic interests. But where the difference lies is in the place of the oligarchy in these two countries.
The Russian oligarchy does not interfere much in the politics of the Kremlin, while in its neighbor the oligarchy plays a major political role. Put simply, Russian oligarchs serve the most powerful people in Russia, while Ukrainian oligarchs are the most powerful and influential people in Ukraine. A major difference which also explains why Volodymyr Zelensky launched a campaign of “de-oligarchization”, in order to fight against their influence on the country’s politics.
Did it work?
No. At the same time, how do you want to put an end to an economic and political power that has been in place for more than twenty-five years? Ukrainian politics has always worked thanks to the oligarchic system, Zelensky has surely come to realize this.
Among the most powerful and influential personalities of Ukraine, it is necessary to distinguish two families. On the one hand the “insiders“, who play a key role within the political-economic networks of the country. A relatively closed group based on relations and informal knowledge, between insiders of this system. This is the case of Medvedchuk. On the other side, you have the “underdogs“, those who also play an important role in the country’s politics, without being part of a network of oligarchs and therefore without having economic interests to prevail. Zelensky is the fervent defender, he, the actor successful president without the benefit of oligarchic influence.
However, thanks to this capture and his very good leadership as a warlord, Zelensky could see his status and his prestige considerably reinforced. What solidify his political influence as a leader after the war and allow him to fight, even more, against the influence of “insiderson the political decisions of the country.
What about the other oligarchs? Could they, too, be arrested?
The Medvedchuk case should not be generalized. Today, many of them stand with Ukraine. In my opinion, the elites help the Ukrainian government, including through financial support to help the Ukrainian army obtain ammunition, weapons and military equipment. Just take the past example of Igor Kolomoiski. Third in the fortune of Ukraine, he was appointed governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region in the south-east of the country in the first days after the military takeover of Crimea by Russia in 2014. At that time, the he Ukrainian army was very weak and Kolomoiski decided to finance new military training and to offer bonuses for the capture of Russian weapons and personnel or pro-Russian separatists. Measures which have made it possible to stop the advance of Russia in the Donbass.