The war between Ukrainians and the Moscow invaders for their own statehood and independence has reopened a long-standing, painful wound caused by the collaboration of some Ukrainian citizens with their age-old enemy. Now the names of traitors, especially those endowed with state power, are once again on everyone’s lips, but they are no longer spoken in whispers or hints, but in full voice, and the courts, though moving at a snail’s pace, are nonetheless handing down sentences to the enemies’ servants for their anti-state actions.
The undisputed leader of Ukraine’s latest pantheon of VIP traitors is Viktor Medvedchuk, who for nearly three decades held high-ranking government positions (People’s Deputy of Ukraine in the 2nd–4th and 9th convocations, Deputy and First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine under Leonid Kuchma), owned numerous influential media outlets and vast financial resources, and, at the same time, was the godfather of the Muscovite leader. These facts from his treasonous biography are known to the vast majority of Ukrainians who are interested in such matters. But few people today remember how Viktor Medvedchuk got his start in big-time politics and who helped this traitor to Ukraine infiltrate the state authorities. So let’s refresh our memory.
IN SHORT:
- Viktor Medvedchuk’s father was convicted of collaborating with the Nazi occupation regime during World War II
- The lawyer for the dissident poet Vasyl Stus was carefully selected—from among the young but those who had been tested by the totalitarian system
- Both the Transcarpathian regional government team led by Serhiy Ustyich and his staunch opponents—Viktor Bed and Uzhhorod Mayor S. Ratushniak—vied with one another to curry favor with the influential and wealthy capital-based lawyer-businessman
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…
Viktor Medvedchuk was born far from Ukrainian territory—in the village of Pochech in the Aban District of the Krasnoyarsk Krai in Russia. It was there that the father of the future traitor served his sentence of forced resettlement after completing his prison term for collaborating with the Nazi occupation regime during World War II. From April 1942 to November 1943, Medvedchuk Sr. worked in the labor office (Arbeitsamt) in the town of Kornyn, Zhytomyr Oblast. The main task of this “institution” was to carry out the forced deportation of able-bodied young people from Kornyn and the surrounding villages to work in Germany, which is exactly what he did.
In the mid-1960s, the family returned from Siberia to their hometown. After graduating from high school in 1971, Viktor Medvedchuk attempted to enroll in the Higher School of the Militia. However, he was not allowed to take the entrance exams, and the “first” department of the militia school explained exactly why. But just a year later, on September 12, 1972, by a separate (!) order of the rector of Kyiv State University named after Shevchenko, he was admitted “above quota” as a student in the law faculty. It is not hard to guess who had the opportunity to “put pressure” on the rector to admit this “above-quota” student.
While studying in his second year at the law faculty, Viktor Medvedchuk became the commander of the Komsomol operational unit of the volunteer people’s militia of the Lenin District Committee of the Komsomol in Kyiv. On November 8, 1973, while on duty, he, along with two other members of the operational unit, beat the minor Andriy Krychak, for which he was sentenced to two years in prison in 1974. However, after protracted legal “maneuvers,” the verdict was overturned, and the case was reclassified from bodily harm to abuse of authority, and Viktor Medvedchuk returned from his prison cell to a university classroom.
How the “conservative” was “laid”
These and other secret twists and turns in Viktor Medvedchuk’s personal biography, including his legal “mission” in the case of dissident Vasyl Stus, were covered in great detail by Dmytro Chobit, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament of the 1st–3rd convocations, in his book *Narcissus, or Sketches for a Portrait of Viktor Medvedchuk*.
After the book’s publication, Viktor Medvedchuk filed a lawsuit with the Pechersky District Court seeking a ruling that 99 facts published in the book were untrue and defamed his honor, dignity, and professional reputation. The Pechersky District Court of Kyiv ordered the publishers to retract part of the information and pay monetary compensation. However, Dmytro Chobit appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court of Ukraine, which on July 4, 2007, issued a final decision to reject all of Viktor Medvedchuk’s claims regarding the inaccuracy of the book’s content. Therefore, the veracity of the facts presented in the book is beyond doubt, and anyone who now has a deep interest in the origins of Medvedchuk’s treachery can find answers to their questions in it.
After graduating from the law faculty of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Viktor Medvedchuk built his own career as a lawyer. It began to develop particularly successfully following the show trial of the dissident poet Vasyl Stus, during which Viktor Medvedchuk performed the role of defense attorney entrusted to him by the state. “Defense attorneys” for such defendants were selected with particular care—young but thoroughly vetted. Of course, little depended on the attorney—the poet’s prison sentence had been determined long before the trial, in other offices.
After successfully carrying out the mission entrusted to him in the judicial farce against Stus and having reached influential heights in the legal profession (in 1989 he headed the legal advisory office of Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskyi District; in 1990 he became president of the Ukrainian Bar Association; in 1992, he received the title of “Honored Lawyer of Ukraine” and shortly thereafter—the Order of Merit, Second Class), Medvedchuk set out to establish himself as a political figure in order to influence state-building processes.
The game was worth the candle, and the mandate—the money spent
His participation in the 1994 elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine was his first attempt to enter national politics on a nationwide level, but he failed to secure the long-awaited victory in Kyiv’s single-member district No. 1. After this bitter defeat, he realized that to launch a successful campaign at the national level, he first needed to secure a “foothold” somewhere on the periphery. It was precisely at this time that his keen interest in Transcarpathia emerged. All the more so because favorable conditions were just taking shape there.
On June 28, 1996, the fifth session of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a new version of the country’s Constitution. In accordance with its provisions, Serhiy Ustyich, head of the Transcarpathian Regional State Administration, could no longer hold his position concurrently with the mandate of a People’s Deputy of Ukraine and resigned from his parliamentary seat. In the fall of that same year, by-elections were held in the Irshava electoral district vacated by Ustyich. The frontrunners were Viktor Bed, a long-time opponent of the head of the Regional State Administration and leader of the regional organization of the Christian Democratic Party of Ukraine (CDPU), as well as a member of the first convocation of the Verkhovna Rada, and Anna Matiko-Bubnova, a native of the district and a Kyiv-based official. However, neither of them received the 50% plus one vote of the total number of voters required at that time, so the by-election was postponed to April 1997.
Time is relentless. With nearly thirty years having passed, it is quite difficult to determine exactly how Medvedchuk’s arrival in Transcarpathia as a candidate for a parliamentary seat began, since he himself is in Russia under the protection of his godfather Putin, and Ustych has long since passed away.
At present, only one thing can be stated with certainty—the local political establishment of Transcarpathia at the time did everything in its power to help the Kyiv candidate become a People’s Deputy.
Medvedchuk was warmly welcomed in the region. Everyone was eager to demonstrate their desire to curry favor with the influential and wealthy lawyer-businessman from the capital: both the regional government team led by Ustych and his staunch opponents—Viktor Bed and Uzhhorod Mayor Serhiy Ratushniak. Bed called Medvedchuk’s legal mission in the judicial farce against Stus a “civic feat,” while Ratushniak addressed voters in the Irshava district through his newspaper RIO with the following appeal: “Understanding the full significance of this event, I urge you to come to the polling stations and take this opportunity to use your vote to strengthen our hope for a better future. One of your candidates is Viktor Medvedchuk. It is precisely such people that our parliament lacks. Vote for him! Knowing this man personally, I am ready to take responsibility alongside him for carrying out your orders.”
It must be acknowledged that the candidate for the Verkhovna Rada skillfully structured his election campaign and spared no expense on it, because the game was worth the candle! In addition to fully mobilizing the region’s administrative resources, he established personal contacts with influential and respected local figures—community leaders, heads of enterprises and organizations, successful entrepreneurs, medical professionals, educators, and, of course, priests from all dioceses—and spared no expense to win, or rather buy, their favor. During the election campaign, Medvedchuk visited every (!) settlement in his district, promptly resolving the issues voters brought to his attention: from buying an accordion for a club in a remote village to a John Deere tractor for a large agricultural enterprise. But he won the greatest favor with voters by facilitating the gasification of specific settlements.
The influential regional weekly “FEST,” in its April 3, 1997, issue, dedicated an interesting and rather scathing article to those elections under the headline “How One Kyiv Lawyer Reconciled the Opposition with the Authorities.” To better understand the situation, I will quote from it: “While Matiko-Bubnova’s candidacy in the previous Irshava elections caused a rift in Transcarpathian political circles, the lawyer, who precisely followed her path, on the contrary, enjoys the support of both camps. Why is that? Is it because he is a member of the Presidential Coordination Committee on Combating Corruption and Organized Crime, or because he is the President’s advisor on tax policy? […] Medvedchuk’s victory means more to him personally than to the voters.
Numerous figures from both the corridors of power and the opposition are counting on something. And generally, when the President’s man runs for office, everyone rushes to pave his path with roses. If such a stance is understandable for the governor, then why are the opposition members making such a fuss and emphasizing that Mr. Medvedchuk will only succeed with their assistance?”…
Medvedchuk won the election by an overwhelming margin—66,905 voters out of 71,057 who participated in the election, or 94.2%, voted for him. But the first personal victory of Putin’s future “stooge” in the parliamentary by-election in the Irshava electoral district of Zakarpattia Oblast became his first “foothold” in Ukrainian politics and paved the way for the SDPU (O) to clear the 4% “threshold” in the next parliamentary elections in 1998, and secured Medvedchuk’s election to the posts of deputy, and later first deputy, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. But that is the subject of the next publication.
Vasyl Ilnytskyi
