Medvedchuk, one of Ukraine’s richest men, escaped from house arrest on charges of treason in the days following the Russian invasion. His possible arrest was announced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday. “I propose to the Russian Federation to exchange this man of yours with our boys and girls who are now in Russian captivity,” Zelensky said in a video posted to the Telegram. Medvenchuk was handcuffed and sloppy, dressed in military uniforms with a patch for the Ukrainian flag – a disguise he wore to leave the country, according to Ukrainian officials. Medvedchuk boasts close ties to Putin and was seen in Ukraine as a means of communicating with the Kremlin, and also acted as an intermediary in the exchange of Ukrainian prisoners and Russian-backed fighters in eastern Ukraine. Medvedchuk is regularly photographed next to Putin, who is said to be his daughter’s godfather. Despite their close ties, it appears the Kremlin is not committing itself to a prisoner exchange to help get Putin’s close friend out of jail. The reason? Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov said Medvedev was a Ukrainian citizen. military. mode. He is a foreign politician. ” He added that Moscow “has no idea” whether Medvedchuk himself would like such an exchange. With no one predicting what Putin would do with his ally, state television experts turned to their usual tactic: portraying the fugitive prisoner as someone who was unjustly detained and brutally tortured in Ukraine. “You can say that Medvedchuk was bathed and hastily photographed,” Olga Skabeeva, the presenter of state-run 60 Minutes, said on Wednesday. The photos clearly show that the man was tortured … This torture obviously lasted for about a month “. “These are ISIS methods,” added Evgeny Popov, co-presenter. He was outraged by Zelensky’s offer to exchange Putin’s ally for the captured Ukrainian soldiers: “For decades, all of Ukraine’s politics, the whole of Ukraine’s economy was based on solidarity.” The remark brought to the fore the irony of such a statement, given the great influence of the circle of Putin’s oligarchic friends on Russia’s economy and politics. In a statement on Medvedchuk’s arrest, Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said: “You can be a pro-Russian politician and work for the aggressor state for years … You can even wear a Ukrainian military camouflage uniform. But will it help you escape punishment? Not at all! “Bonds are waiting for you and the same is true for traitors in Ukraine like you.” Medvedchuk was closely linked to Ukraine’s 112 Ukraine, Zika and Newsone television channels, which closed last year amid allegations of Russian misinformation. He reportedly earned millions by buying a stake in a Russian oil refinery in the mining town of Novosakhtinsk at an artificially low price. Medvedchuk bought a majority stake in the refinery in the name of his wife, TV star Oksana Marchenko, in an apparent attempt to circumvent US sanctions. On Wednesday, Marchenko released a video appeal to President Zelensky, demanding the immediate release of her husband. She claimed that her husband did not break any law and did not leave Ukraine, accusing the authorities of detaining him for political motives. Wearing a headscarf, Marchenko also appealed to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which was broadcast on Russian state television. In a Telegram post, Dmitry Medvedev, vice-president of Russia’s Security Council and former president of Russia, was arrested. “These horrors, which the Ukrainian authorities call themselves, say they want to condemn a testimony of Victor Medvenchuk, ‘quickly and fairly’, condemn him and then exchange him for prisoners,” he said. Medvedev doubled his statement with an outspoken threat: “These people should be careful and lock the doors well at night to make sure they do not become the people they exchange.” Looking at Medvedchuk’s picture on the jumbotron during the 60 Minutes show, Viktor Baranets, a former army spokesman who now writes for the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, complained about his sloppy appearance: “He is being held captive for no reason, but “Torturing a person in this way, leading him to such a situation and talking about it in public, shows that the morale of the Ukrainian president is rotten.” Dmitry Egorchenkov, director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Forecasting, said the whole arrest was “artificially made” and that he had been detained for a long time. Trying to renew the drama, Egorchenkov made an astonishing comparison: “When I look at the set pictures with Medvedchuk, the first thing that comes to mind is Saddam Hussein.”
