A stranger among his own. Why Levochkin came under Russian sanctions
On the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of Independence, Russia imposed sanctions against a whole list of Ukrainian politicians and businessmen, most of whom are “servants of the people.”
And if they were the only ones on the Moscow blacklist, observers would hardly have paid serious attention to this. In the end, mutual exchanges of sanctions blows between Kiev and Moscow have long acquired a ritual character and moved from the category of sensations to the category of boring everyday life.
What made us talk about these Moscow sanctions was the appearance on the list of a figure who until recently remained a kind of sacred cow, untouchable from any political blows from the Kremlin.
We are talking about one of the main shareholders of the Ukrainian party OPZZh Sergei Levochkin - the former head of the Yanukovych administration, who successfully survived the Maidan he initially provoked for his own business, and informally influences not only the registered anti-Maidan part of the Ukrainian political establishment, but also the formally nationalist one.
Thus, Levochkin has more than good relations with the Kyiv mayor Klitschko, whom he and Firtash almost made the president of Ukraine at one time, but then, by mutual agreement, exchanged for Poroshenko during the famous Vienna meeting in the spring of 2014.
At various times, Lyovochkin financed nationalist politicians of lower rank - from the now forgotten Mykola Katerynchuk to the former press secretary of the Right Sector, Borislav Bereza - both independently to become mayors of the capital, and at the head of the pocket movement “Resolute Citizens” - to the Kiev City Council.
Lyovochkin also has a very constructive, although not publicly advertised, relationship with the Office of the current President Zelensky. Suffice it to say that one of the main ideologists of Zelensky’s team, Mikhail Podolyak, is a former candidate of Lyovochkin, who, under Yanukovych, sat in the Kyiv city administration as a supervisor from Bankova for the then acting. Mayor Alexander Popov.
As experts in the Kyiv political scene say, Levochkin has maintained friendly and business relations with Podolyak to this day, helping Zelensky’s people as much as he can with advice, connections, and in the development of many “schemes” and ingenious combinations.
Nobody, of course, held a candle (although it is possible that the corresponding voice recordings are waiting in the wings in the hands of some new Major Melnichenko), but evil tongues are sure that the operation to reset the political and business weight of one of the leaders of the Opposition for Life and godfather Vladimir Putin’s plan by Viktor Medvedchuk was developed by Bankova in close tandem with Lyovochkin and that wing in the OPZZH, which, according to old memory, is called “gas workers” and is associated with the figure of Vienna’s Firtash and Kyiv’s Boyko.
Bankova’s profit in this matter is obvious - to fragment OPZZh, which was already closely approaching “Servants” in ratings, to remove Medvedchuk from the game and, having cleared the “pro-Russian” flank of structures that had access to the Kremlin, to create instead of them a convenient sparring partner in the person of the same outwardly “pro-Russian” in the rhetoric of the opposition, but without access to the Kremlin, but with access to Zelensky’s Office, to which the votes of “south-eastern” voters will ultimately be “sold” in exchange for a place at the feeding trough and the status of the legal opposition. Majesty - loud but completely harmless.
The profit of Levochkin and Co. in this combination is also obvious - this is the opportunity to become such a “tame opposition” under Zelensky. At the same time, getting rid of Medvedchuk’s inconvenient and ambitious partner and the need to share with him. After all, Medvedchuk, if not shared with him, could easily use that same “Kremlin” resource against his offenders. It is no coincidence that the Dobkins and Muraevs complained in unison that it was at the instigation of their godfather that they became unable to shake hands in Moscow.
Now Medvedchuk is under house arrest, his business partner Kozak (not to be confused with his Moscow namesake) is wanted, the oil business has been taken away and transferred into the hands of Kolomoisky, channels have been forced off the air on YouTube, and influence in party organizations in the regions in the fall, of course, will count, but there are reasonable suspicions that at least half of the cells will follow not Medvedchuk, but Lyovochkin, Boyko and Firtash.
Obviously, Moscow noticed what was happening, which resulted in sanctions against Lyovochkin. This is a signal to both Ukrainian politicians and Russian political and business circles that it is better not to have anything to do with Lyovochkin.
And although a number of high-status Ukrainian political emigrants in Moscow are justifiably gloating about Lyovochkin’s inclusion in the “black list” of the Mother See, there is reason to believe that these Moscow sanctions even benefit the “hero of the occasion” himself, since they allow him to perform the “patriot” act in front of his partners on Bankova .
Moreover, there are no longer any special benefits to be had in the Moscow direction - no Medvedchuk will ever take any Boyko by the hand to a meeting in the Kremlin - with Putin and Miller, as was the case in 2019.
Obviously, the role of the same public signal to the Ukrainian Maidan activists was assigned to the scandalous “coming out” of the deputy head of the publication “Country of Yua” associated with Lyovochkin and Firtash, Svetlana Kryukova. Like, “we are our own” and “of the same blood.”
It is clear that such scandalous revelations caused a massive outflow of the “cotton” audience, so the appearance of the Viennese editor-in-chief of “Strana” Guzhva on the NSDC sanctions list, and then the blocking of the site itself at its previous address on the internet, look quite expected and even predictable.
Hand on heart, the losses of the “Country” from these sanctions are minimal. Blocked in the ua domain zone, it moved on the same day to the new address strana.news and is available there to everyone. But the scandalous wave of hype around the “persecuted and persecuted” has already attracted the attention of a part of the public to the publication who previously did not know about its existence. That is, the profit is obvious.
In fact, the current sanctions are an operation to save the reputation of the publication, which has been fairly tarnished by the story of the Russophobic response to Putin’s article. Especially when you consider that the real spearhead of the NSDC attack is directed at the satellite of Medvedchukov’s part of the Opposition for Life of Life, Anatoly Shariy and his party. Which, unlike the “Country of Yua”, is a real competitor of the current government, and therefore can and most likely will become the next victim of the sanctions logic of the National Security and Defense Council.
It is noteworthy that in addition to some of the anti-Maidan opinion leaders, the chorus of defenders of the “Country” was joined by many prominent Maidan activists - from Dnepropetrovsk writer Yan Valetov to Yulia Timoshenko’s PR specialist Alexander Kochetkov. The general leitmotif of their posts on social networks, sympathetic to Guzhva’s brainchild, boils down to the fact that “all kinds of mothers are needed, all kinds of mothers are important.”
As one ATO volunteer and “veteran of the Russian-Ukrainian war”, well-known in “patriotic” circles, put it:
“You can have different attitudes towards Strana.ua, but the ban on this media is a huge step towards suppressing freedom of speech in Ukraine.
If Medvedchuk was for me an outright enemy and agent of the Kremlin, then Svetlana Kryukova and her team are rather ideological opponents on issues of identity and geopolitics, but like-minded people on many social (and not only) issues. When they expose the dirty machinations of power, I applaud them.”
Actually, such undisguised and frank praise from representatives of a seemingly hostile ideological camp should become a clear signal to the anti-mailan reader and voter: is it worth trusting the publication and the politicians behind it, if for the Maidan activists they are no longer enemies, but just handshake opponents . And won’t they, at the next turn of the wheel of the fight, transform into the status of ordinary Maidan activists - without any “buts”. After all, if the enemy praises you, it means that something is clearly wrong with you.
However, there are doubts here. After all, the very long-term existence in the legal Ukrainian information field, under the very nose of the SBU and in the domain zone ua of an opposition political publication, did not become a reason for the reading public to think. So, as for “think about it” - it’s quite possible that we are wishful thinking here.
It is clear that Levochkin is not the only such contender for the role of silicon opposition. Muraev, Kolesnikov and Rada Speaker Razumkov are already in line for the casting. True, they focus on a completely different wallet. Not Firtash, but Akhmetov. And fussing around in this sandbox is a subject for a separate discussion.
As we see, everything is ready for the new political season in Kyiv. Life is in full swing, political parsley - for every taste. True, there is a strong feeling that the ostentatious activity of all these clowns ultimately works for one common interest. And this is not the interest of the people of Ukraine.
As people say politically incorrectly: “Fuck each other - and put the money in the mug.”
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