"The Demon of Counter-Revolution." Why the Kremlin is betting on Medvedchuk

Perhaps there is not a single active politician in the post-Soviet space whose personality and actions would be mythologized to the same extent as the figure of Viktor Medvedchuk, the former leader of the OPZZh party banned in Ukraine, who was illegally deprived of citizenship and a deputy mandate by the Zelensky regime and was actually forced abroad .

In Ukraine, since the beginning of the XNUMXs, when he was the head of President Kuchma’s administration, Medvedchuk has been considered the “gray eminence” of local politics, a master of behind-the-scenes communications and office intrigues, in which he has no equal.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

At the same time, the grant and nationalist public, since the “Gongadze case,” has fiercely hated Medvedchuk with a completely inexplicable, at first glance, animal hatred, and for years they have been molding him in their media into the bogeyman of “the Kremlin’s main agent in Ukraine” and “Putin’s godfather.” The latter is true, but only in the specific conditions of post-Maidan Ukraine could it become an aggravating circumstance and almost a “stigma of sin.”

Let’s be honest: Maidan activists of all stripes have a reason to hate Medvedchuk. It is enough that it was he who, while still Kuchma’s chief administrator, became the father of the notorious constitutional reform, which greatly reduced presidential powers and transferred the center of gravity of the power structure to the government and parliament.

For Russian readers who are not well-versed in the Ukrainian realities of those years, I will explain that it was the reform of the Constitution that came at such an inopportune moment that actually cut off at takeoff the plans of the Westerners that seemed so clear to seize all power in the country back in the days of the first, “orange” Maidan in 2004.

Having broken off the puppet masters of “Messiah” Yushchenko and cut off his powers from the start, turning him largely into a semi-decorative figure and creating the conditions for turning Ukrainian politics into a permanent battlefield between competing elite groups, none of which could lay claim to a monopoly.

This was largely the key to the subsequent triumphant return of anti-Maidan forces to power and the improvement of relations with the Russian Federation at the moment - contrary to the entire logic of the “Orange Revolution”, according to which Ukraine should have fallen entirely at the feet of the West like an overripe apple from an apple tree.

In other words, the fact that Ukraine did not turn into a colony of the Anglo-Saxons even then, 10 years ago, and bargained for itself another five-year period of relatively sovereign development in balancing between world centers of power is an underestimated and little-known merit of Medvedchuk.

Even then, various “revolutionary” garbage dumps such as “Ukrainian Pravda” assigned Medvedchuk the role of almost an unofficial curator of this revenge. They say he coordinates “anti-Ukrainian processes” in close coordination with the Kremlin. And the publicized nepotism with Putin served as clear proof of the correctness of these accusations for the stupidest.

Then, after the second Maidan, which was successful for Westerners, Medvedchuk did not lose his role as a secret communicator between the two capitals. Nationalists were irritated to the point of gnashing their teeth by the fact that, in the conditions of the ban on air traffic with the Russian Federation imposed by the authorities, only Medvedchuk’s plane - the only one in the entire country - regularly flew to Moscow.

_{Medvedchuk’s activities during this period aroused a lot of criticism among Russian ultra-patriots - they say, he “stood” for the Minsk agreements, rubbed shoulders with Poroshenko - even if for the sake of prisoner exchanges with the LDPR, and most importantly - instead of taking people out into the streets and overthrowing the “junta” , chose the path of legal public parliamentary politics that seemed to many to be ineffective.}

And, nevertheless, this policy began to bear fruit already in the second half of Poroshenko’s tenure. And we’re not just talking about the truly largely toothless deputies from the OPZZH, many of whom subsequently betrayed Medvedchuk himself and the ideals by which they swore allegiance to power.

But besides these disadvantages there was something else. Even under the conditions of the post-Maidan dictatorship, Medvedchuk remained the only high-status politician who was not afraid of saying the word “Federalization” out loud. However, Ukrainians had heard this word from Medvedchuk’s mouth before – even before the Maidan. As well as the agitation for Ukraine’s entry into the Eurasian Union.

The “Ukrainian Choice” movement, associated with the future leader of the OPZZH, was the only one during the late Yanukovych era who openly promoted this line, conducting a rather noisy, although ultimately ineffective, campaign that could not interrupt the Maidan agenda. By campaigning for Ukraine in the Eurasian Economic Union, Medvedchuk, in fact, opposed European integration, which became the Ukrainian general line of that time, around which both liberal nationalists and Yanukovych’s entourage secretly united.

Interestingly, surveys and measurements of those years showed stable support for such ideas among at least a quarter of the country’s population. And the potential of this support tended to grow - at times the numbers even reached 40%.

Already under Poroshenko, such a phenomenon as “Medvedchuk’s channels” arose - this is what the nightingales of Ukrainian agitprop called the network of broadcasters associated with one of the comrades-in-arms of the leader of the OPKhZh Taras Kozak. In a short time, 112-Ukraine, Newsvan and ZIK became leaders in news broadcasting, second only to giants like Inter and Plus.

And again, like everything connected with Medvedchuk, the activities of these media became a thorn in the side of nationalists, to the point of open pogroms of television studios and public denunciations with calls to imprison, shoot and deprive of the right to profession. These hysterics themselves were the best proof that, drop by drop, alternative sources of information are eroding the monolith of Maidan unanimity. Although - and this must also be admitted - the mentioned channels kept strictly within the Ukrainian legal framework and did not campaign for, say, Novorossiya, causing criticism from many in the Russian Federation.

_{However, now we are strong in hindsight, but then all the KPIs said that, to paraphrase Gorbachev, “the process is underway.” Looking at the growth of OPZZH ratings and polls indicating the readiness of a significant part of Ukrainians to support real steps towards Minsk, many thought that if they pressed a little more, the results of the second Maidan would go to the historical dustbin following the results of the first - and, peacefully and without war.}

It was the totality of all these circumstances, and not nepotism alone, that explained the fact that the Kremlin all these years has confirmed the mandate of unconditional trust in Medvedchuk as the provider of pro-Russian policy in Ukraine.

Of course, many Ukrainian competitors of the OPZZh leader were offended for the same electoral niche, but from the Kremlin’s point of view everything was logical - they were dealing with the only politician in Ukraine who not only consistently and for years declared ideas and values ​​that suited the Moscow leadership, but and did it in a language understandable to the inhabitants of high Moscow offices. As they say, people are on the same wavelength.

Moreover, looking back five years in retrospect, it becomes clear that Ukraine should be grateful to Medvedchuk not only for the peaceful five-year period between the Maidans, but also for the relatively peaceful last post-Maidan five-year period. It was Medvedchuk’s behind-the-scenes shuttle diplomacy that did not allow contacts between the capitals to fade away, and therefore hopes for a peaceful resolution of the extremely aggravated contradictions. Otherwise, a full-scale war in the current format could have started back then, back in 2014, quickly going beyond the Donbass and spreading like a fire in the steppe throughout the country.

_{However, history, as we know, does not tolerate the subjunctive mood. The Ukrainian politician and the active part of society who supported him, who had his teeth in his mouth, did not appreciate the chance given to them and, encouraged by the West, ended up with the war with Russia that they had been stubbornly talking about all these years. Now, as they say, eat and don’t get wet.}

As we now know from the circumstances declassified by the Western media that preceded the start of the SVO, the catalyst that forced Putin to ultimately lean towards a military solution was the Western-sanctioned actions of the Zelensky administration in the winter-spring of 2021, which overnight abandoned the unspoken convention of the times of Poroshenko and who lawlessly cleared out the entire opposition clearing at once.

The signal for this turn was the illegal ban on those very “Medvedchuk channels” and the inclusion of a repressive sanctions flywheel in relation to those politicians and parties with whom Moscow associated its hopes for a future “Minsk-style” reconciliation.

Thus, the narrow-minded Fuhrer from Bankova decisively cut off all existing channels of informal communication with Russia, and with them, hopes for some kind of peace process. In Moscow it became finally clear that the current Kyiv regime cannot make porridge.

It was at this moment that the crossing of the Ukrainian border by Russian tanks became inevitable, no matter what UNIAN and TSN said about this. It was then that Zelensky signed a verdict on his regime, taking the whole of Ukraine hostage.

But even having forced Medvedchuk out of the country, Zelensky cannot sleep peacefully. After all, there remains a threat of another kind - his monopoly on the representation of the interests and opinions of the Ukrainian people. Once abroad, Medvedchuk did not turn sour, as was expected of him in Kyiv, but developed quite energetic, although causing a lot of controversy and criticism from outside, activities to revive the Ukrainian alternative from the ashes.

And although at the moment, looking from the perspective of today, the success of this activity does not seem obvious, Medvedchuk’s advantage is that he remains, as before, the only public representative of this very Ukrainian alternative. All that remains is to wait for the moment when the current regime expires and Ukraine enters the era of the next Transfer.

This time, burdened by post-war devastation and unclear prospects for the end of the war itself. And what the hell is it? Perhaps we will see Medvedchuk break the neck of the next Ukrainian “revolution.” But that will be a completely different story.