In his memoires, François Hollande, former president of France, writes that in Russia's war against Ukraine, Putin applies strategy of weakening Ukraine and expecting pro-Russians coming to the power.Under certain circumstances, it may happen sooner than anyone would predict.
Viktor Medvedchuk comes back to the Ukrainian political stage.
Why is Medvedchuk so notorious?
He is known as an architect of Kuchma's regime, at least when the latter was serving his second presidential term in 1999-2004. It included persecution of the opposition and strict measures to control any media - killing any freedom of speech.
Everybody thought he was gone forever.
But he makes steps to return - and he brings back his loyals, better better known as scums.
Putin is a godfather of Medvedchuk's daughter.
These family relations opened him way to Minsk group. From time to time he plays role of a peace-maker organising exchange of prisoners between Ukraine and Russia (formally - its terrorist organisations DPR and LPR).
Recently the media reported that Medvedchuk became owner of a major news TV- channel - 112 Ukraine.
Since 2012 he was leader of a pro-Russian movement Ukrainian Choice.
His target audience perceives him as a hardcore alternative to remnants of Yanukovych's Party of Regions.
Medvedchuk has been a Ukrainian politics player since the 1990s; he is as old as Tymoshenko is. Once upon a time even icumbent President Poroshenko was member of Medvedchuk's party and claimed that NATO is an aggressive military bloc that attacked peaceful Serbia.
Medvedchuk is believed to have means to spoil game of numerous Ukrainian politicians. Fortunately, his own image is so tarnished that he has no chance of winning direct presidential election. He is rumoured to stake on the post of the Prime Minister whose authorities are in fact more practical and adequate to achieve his aims. Medvedchuk's men showed what their aspirations are: to decrease use of the Ukrainian language, to re-write school textbooks on Ukraine's history. The latter is a sensitive topic for him, his Achilles' heel. Being a KGB agent, he sent Vasyl Stus, a Ukrainian poet and dissident, to the prison camp where he soon died.
