Ukraine’s domestic spy agency, the SBU, successfully carried out a special operation to capture pro-Kremlin lawmaker Viktor Medvedchuk who in February fled house arrest while facing charges of high treason and for financing terrorism.
The news was posted on the respective social media pages of the SBU and President Volodymyr Zelensky on the evening of April 12.
Medvedchuk, 67, who disappeared on the eve of Russia’s renewed invasion of Feb. 24, was pictured handcuffed, dressed in military garb while looking disheveled and fatigued.
“You can be a pro-Russian politician and work for the aggressor state for years. You can even wear a Ukrainian military uniform for concealment… But will it help you escape punishment? Not at all! Shackles await you,” SBU chief Ivan Bakanov said.
Zelesnky added that further details of the operation to detain Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s trusted confidante in Ukraine “will be disclosed in due time.”
In announcing the suspect’s capture, Bakanov thanked “SBU officers, in particular, investigators and counterintelligence officers, who following the instructions of the president of Ukraine…proved their professionalism and conducted a lightning-fast and dangerous special operation to detain member of parliament Medvedchuk.”
Authorities accuse the lawmaker of treason and terrorist-financing for facilitating public procurement of coal from Russian-controlled territories in Ukraine’s easternmost regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in 2014-2015.
Medvedchuk had been under house arrest since May 2021 after being charged in an attempted embezzlement case. In October of the same year, the treason charges were levied. The latter charges also concern the alleged divulgement of military secrets to Moscow.
He has denied all charges as “political repression.”
Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin is the godfather to Medvedchuk’s older daughter and both publicly have said they enjoy warm relations. The suspect is a trained lawyer and life-long pro-Russian politician who has advocated for closer ties between Kyiv and Moscow and has opposed Ukraine’s efforts to integrate with the European Union and NATO.
As a lawmaker, Medvedchuk has never acknowledged Russia’s role as an aggressor for first invading the country in 2014 when Putin ordered the forcible seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and occupation of certain parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
The United States sanctioned him in 2014 for his now-defunct non-profit group’s role in promoting Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and stringent pro-Russian stance with regard to the Donbas territories.
Kyiv authorities had also previously shut down his television channels for their overtly pro-Russian bias and for promoting false Kremlin narratives about Ukraine.
