After Medvedchuk, de-oligarchization to affect others, until they all become just big businessmen – Zelensky 3 min read
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky regards the latest events around Ukrainian MP of the Opposition Platform - For Life faction Viktor Medvedchuk as excluding him from the circle of Ukrainian oligarchs and announces plans to de-oligarchize all major Ukrainian businessmen. For the first time in many years, the number of oligarchs has not increased, but decreased. Minus Medvedchuk. With the help of legal tools, Medvedchuk was deprived of the opportunity to use media assets and state property in order to openly hit the country and cause devastating damage to state security. There will be more minuses until all the oligarchs become just big businessmen, Zelensky wrote in his column in the Focus magazine on Friday.
UKRAINE has placed the leader of its biggest opposition party under house arrest on charges that he says are politically motivated.
Viktor Medvedchuk heads the Opposition Platform – for Life party, a left-leaning organisation that attracted Kiev’s ire recently for staging anti-fascist marches on Victory Day (May 9, the date of the 1945 Nazi surrender to the Soviet Union).
Mr Medvedchuk is accused of disclosing state secrets on the deployment of military units to Russia and of transferring oil and gas production licences in Crimea to its authorities. The peninsula, where ethnic Russians comprise the majority of the population, was occupied by Russia following the Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014, and voted to reunite with Russia (of which it was a part until 1961) shortly afterwards.
Putin promised to respond to Ukraine
During a video conference on May 14 with members of the Russian Security Council, Putin commented on the persecution of Viktor Medvedchuk, the co-chairman of the pro-Russian Ukrainian party Opposition Platform for Life.
Putin pointed out that the Ukrainian authorities, at the suggestion of the West, tend to turn the country into an antipode of Russia, into some kind of anti-Russia. Therefore, Moscow will constantly monitor news from Ukraine that requires special attention from the point of view of security.
Putin pointed out that Ukraine is cleansing the political field , and Russia will react to that accordingly.