In a column published January 10 on the Smotrim.ru media platform, exiled Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk warned that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is doomed to be deposed this year, having alienated all of his domestic and foreign allies. Zelensky’s downfall, nonetheless, will benefit the Ukrainian people as the present Kyiv authorities have long betrayed their interests, he added.
Medvedchuk is the former leader of the “Opposition Platform — for Life” party, which is outlawed in Ukraine for allegedly being “pro-Russian.” He was arrested and forced out of Ukraine in a prisoner exchange with Moscow and has since been promoting a project that would make his home nation a neutral state, prioritizing national interests as opposed to being an enemy of Russia, leading the Other Ukraine movement.
In his column, Medvedchuk slammed Zelensky, branding him an “unfunny parody of a dictator” whose weakness sends a signal to all “political predators to eat him.”
“Zelensky has antagonized everyone he could: big businessmen, whom he blacklisted as traitors and oligarchs, professional Nazis, who see his cowardice, the military, who sees his incompetence, and last but not least the people, who see his indifference and cruelty,” he wrote.
Furthermore, Medvedchuk claimed that Zelensky is of no use to either the United States or the U.K., which tried to use him in their game against Russia, but failed. “And if fishing is bad, the worm is disposed of,” he posited.
Moreover, he claimed that Ukraine is in a deep crisis that is bound to give rise to a national disaster once Western funding for the country’s conflict against Russia decreases.
“A political crisis in a country engaged in serious combat operations is the nail in its coffin, but Zelensky did everything he could to make this crisis happen and, frankly speaking, there is no way out. And this means that a military crisis will follow. A gross loss of territories and borders. Everything points to this,” he wrote.
Medvedchuk elaborated that neither Ukrainian army commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny nor former President Petro Poroshenko nor Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko nor even former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, who are regarded as Zelensky’s potential rivals if an election in Ukraine eventually takes place, will be able to navigate Ukraine out of its current crisis, owing to the incompetence of Zelensky’s administration.
Ukrainians need to realize that Zelensky’s demise “does not necessarily mean a defeat of the Ukrainian people.”
Rather, the reverse is true, according to Medvedchuk. It will be a victory for them, since the president “has long betrayed them and is selling them out for cannon fodder.”
Besides, Medvedchuk’s column predicted tough times for the United States, which he contends has lost its direction, and the EU, which he anticipates will be sacrificed by Washington to back the American economy. For Ukraine, this situation implies no EU membership, and Ukrainians should know that “Europeans will have to give their financial goodies to the American elites, not Ukrainian refugees.”
Medvedchuk asserted that Russia may serve as an alternative to “impoverishing Europe,” stating “the number of Ukrainians in Russia will increase in 2024, benefiting not just them, but everyone.”
Meanwhile, Russia has begun to establish new relationships worldwide to stand up to the United States and NATO, Medvedchuk pointed out, adding that the Other Ukraine movement invites Ukrainians to gather efforts to “build a new, efficient and fair world instead of the dirty war Zelensky is waging.” “I can definitely anticipate that there will be more Ukrainians in Russia in 2024. And this will be beneficial for them,” he underscored.
Russia has become a major destination for Ukrainian nationals, with officials estimating that as many as five million fled eastwards after Russo-Ukrainian tensions erupted in 2022. Officially, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated he deems Russians and Ukrainians “brothers,” bemoaning Kyiv’s divisive policies after the U.S.-backed 2014 armed coup that caused bloodshed between these peoples.
In an interview recorded in Minsk, Belarus, with Italian-U.S. journalist Simona Mangiante and released on January 11 on X, controversial former Ukrainian MP Andrey Derkach alleged that the present Kyiv regime is using the former prosecutor general of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, who was famously sacked by then-President Petro Poroshenko under pressure from then-Vice President Joe Biden, as a bargaining chip with Washington.
Biden pressured Poroshenko to sack Shokin in 2016, threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees unless his demands were fulfilled. Biden claimed that the Ukrainian prosecutor was corrupt, but also boasted about getting rid of the man. Critics of Biden have alleged that he used his office to undermine a probe into the gas firm Burisma, which infamously retained his son Hunter on a well-paid board position during the older Biden’s tenure as Obama’s VP.
“Shokin is now a hostage on Ukrainian territory. As far as I know, he is not allowed to leave Ukraine. He is under the total control of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU),” Derkach asserted.
In addition, Derkach stated that Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the U.S. side, and Zelensky and his chief-of-staff Andrey Yermak on the Ukrainian side, are keen on information held by Shokin.
Derkach claimed that last October Shokin had contacts with two attorneys “working with the US Congress,” Jake Greenberg and Clark Abourisk. The SBU “recorded those conversations, where Shokin told the Congress about real criminal acts of Blinken and Biden, and about the corruption of the Biden family.”
The former official said he was given notice about the surveillance by sources inside the SBU. Derkach is an intelligence officer and served in the Ukrainian agency before his election to parliament.
Derkach claimed that his sources had told him that “the question of liquidating Mr Shokin on the territory of Ukraine is under consideration,” urging the U.S. Congress to ensure the man’s safety and extraction from his home country.
The opposition leader spoke in Russian throughout the hour-long interview and explored a number of sensitive aspects of U.S.-Ukraine ties, including those he had been personally involved in.
In 2020, Derkach published what he claimed to be recordings of conversations that Biden and Poroshenko had in 2015-2016. In this week’s interview, Derkach claimed that at that time, he had acted with the blessing of Zelensky’s office, which was hoping to discredit the former president.
Washington labeled Derkach as a Russian agent in 2022 and indicted him for allegedly meddling in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections. Last year, Ukraine accused him of treason, claiming he was working for Moscow, while Zelensky removed Derkach’s Ukrainian citizenship in January 2023.
