Viktor Medvedchuk. Photo: Open sources
Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian businessman and pro-Russian politician to whose daughter Russian President Vladimir Putin is godfather and who has been charged with high treason in Ukraine, has demanded that Ukrainian courts restore his Ukrainian citizenship and parliamentary mandate, as well as lift the sanctions imposed by Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council (NSDC).
Source: Ukrainian public broadcaster Hromadske
Details: Medvedchuk currently resides in Moscow. He has created a “political movement” in Russia called The Other Ukraine, the members of which echo or supplement Russian propaganda narratives.
Advertisement:
Medvedchuk publicly blames Ukraine for its unwillingness to end the war, claiming that it is the Ukrainian government that “repeatedly declares that it wants no peace, only more weapons and money”.
On 10 January 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revoked the Ukrainian citizenship of Taras Kozak, Renat Kuzmin, Viktor Medvedchuk, and Andrii Derkach, former lawmakers from the banned Opposition Platform – For Life party faction. The decision was taken “based on evidence presented by the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) and the State Migration Service of Ukraine (SMSU)”.
Under the Constitution of Ukraine, revocation of citizenship also entails the termination of parliamentary powers, so the following day, the Ukrainian parliament deprived these lawmakers of their mandates.
Viktor Medvedchuk filed a case with Ukraine’s Supreme Court a month later, on 20 February 2023. In his lawsuit, he demanded that Ukrainian citizenship be returned to him and his former associates. Medvedchuk claimed that the presidential decree terminating his citizenship had been “illegal, groundless, arbitrary and adopted in violation of the Constitution of Ukraine”.
The Supreme Court accepted the claim in March 2023 and opened proceedings in the case, with hearings continuing to this day.
Judging by the Supreme Court’s rulings in the court register, Medvedchuk first brought a case against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and later the SSU and the SMSU were included as third parties.
The SSU filed a motion to close the case on 25 January 2024. They described Medvedchuk’s lawsuit as a sham.
As journalists learned from their sources, it is likely that after the files on the revoking of Medvedchuk’s citizenship were sent to the president, the SSU cited the oligarch’s Russian…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Ukrainska Pravda…