1. Viktor Volodymyrovych Medvedchuk, known as Viktor Vladimirovich Medvedchuk, is a former Ukrainian lawyer, business oligarch, and politician who has lived in exile in Russia since September 2022 after being handed over to Russia in a prisoner exchange.
Viktor Medvedchuk served as the chairman of the pro-Russian political organization Ukrainian Choice from 2018 to 2022.
Viktor Medvedchuk is an opponent of Ukraine joining the European Union.
From 1997 to 2002 Viktor Medvedchuk was a member of the Verkhovna Rada.
Viktor Medvedchuk served between 2002 and 2005 as chief of staff to then Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma.
Viktor Medvedchuk escaped this house arrest on 28 February 2022, four days after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and went missing.
On 12 April 2022 Viktor Medvedchuk was arrested by the Security Service of Ukraine.
On 21 September 2022, Viktor Medvedchuk was exchanged for 215 Ukrainian POWs from the Siege of Mariupol.
Viktor Medvedchuk has claimed that his father was a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
In 1971, Viktor Medvedchuk graduated from high school in Borova, Fastiv Raion.
In November 1971, Viktor Medvedchuk found a job as sorter at the Kyiv Railroad Post office factory producing periodicals.
Viktor Medvedchuk graduated from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 1978 as a lawyer.
In 1979, Viktor Medvedchuk became a member of the Shevchenkivska Legal Consultation of the Kyiv City Collegiate of Attorneys.
In 1979, Viktor Medvedchuk was the lawyer for repressed poet Yuriy Lytvyn.
In 1980, Viktor Medvedchuk was appointed as a defence lawyer in the trial of dissident poet Vasyl Stus.
In doing so, Viktor Medvedchuk violated his professional duty as lawyer since he seemed to refuse to defend Stus, which grossly violated Stus's right to defense in court.
Viktor Medvedchuk was found guilty by the laws of the time.
Viktor Medvedchuk founded a successful legal company, BIM, in the early 1990s.
On 24 May 2023 Viktor Medvedchuk was stripped of the right to practise law in Ukraine by the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of the Bar of Kyiv Oblast.
Efforts to disbar Viktor Medvedchuk had been ongoing since as early as 2016.
Viktor Medvedchuk appealed his disbar, on 9 February 2024 his appeal was rejected by the Kyiv District Administrative Court.
In 1994, Viktor Medvedchuk became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine.
Viktor Medvedchuk served as chairman from 1998 until two days after the 26 March 2006 parliamentary election.
Viktor Medvedchuk first entered the Verkhovna Rada in 1997 by winning a by-election in the 171st District.
Viktor Medvedchuk was the First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada from February 2000 until December 2001, when he was dismissed for abuse of power, biased treatment of the Verkhovna Rada's agenda and procedural violations.
From June 2002 until January 2005, Viktor Medvedchuk served as head of President Leonid Kuchma's presidential administration.
Viktor Medvedchuk did not take part in elections again until 2019.
In November 2008, Viktor Medvedchuk became a member of the Supreme Council of Justice.
Viktor Medvedchuk is chairman of the pro-Russian political organization Ukrainian Choice.
Euromaidan activists alleged that Viktor Medvedchuk was among the masterminds of the attempted murder of Ukrainian journalist Tetiana Chornovol on 25 December 2013.
On 8 January 2014, Viktor Medvedchuk won a slander lawsuit against Oksana Zabuzhko.
Viktor Medvedchuk believed that because "the current team" leading Ukraine response to "interference in Ukraine's internal affairs by EU and US diplomats inspire serious doubt that the current team is able to protect Ukraine's economic interests".
Viktor Medvedchuk stated that Ukraine "If the Ukrainian government wanted to return Crimea" should restore the electricity and water supply to Crimea through the North Crimean Canal and should stop its economic blockade.
Viktor Medvedchuk was present at negotiations with the armed separatist in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces on 21 June 2014 to discuss President Petro Poroshenko's peace plan although it was unclear whom he represented there.
In May 2021 Viktor Medvedchuk claimed he was first authorized for these negotiations by acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov, and later by President Poroshenko.
On 24 June 2014, the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic informed the OSCE that Viktor Medvedchuk was appointed their representative in the negotiations with the Ukrainian Government.
On 8 July 2014, self-proclaimed Prime Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic Alexander Borodai stated that Viktor Medvedchuk "has no right to represent either the Donetsk People's Republic or the Luhansk People's Republic" and that he was a "mediator in the negotiations".
About the negotiations, Viktor Medvedchuk wrote on his Facebook page on 28 June 2014, "Hope that a compromise will be found has appeared and we'll manage to find a way of the present situation, retaining the territorial integrity of Ukraine and restoring peace".
Viktor Medvedchuk became Ukraine's special representative for humanitarian affairs in the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine on 5 June 2015.
In June 2021 Petro Poroshenko claimed that Viktor Medvedchuk had been involved in the prisoner exchange negotiations on the insistence of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Viktor Medvedchuk claimed that Russian president Vladimir Putin wanted peace in Donbas and that Putin would do everything to protect eastern Ukrainians from repressions from Ukraine's "party of war".
Viktor Medvedchuk admitted that Russia was illegally arming separatist forces but said that the United States, NATO and the EU were doing "the same" by providing weapons to Ukraine.
In November 2018, Viktor Medvedchuk was elected chairman of the political council of For life.
Viktor Medvedchuk was the defence lawyer in the trial of Stus.
Three days later Viktor Medvedchuk was put under house arrest and fitted with an electronic tracking device.
In May 2021, Ukrainian media published recorded audio in which Viktor Medvedchuk congratulated the leader of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic Denis Pushilin on Victory Day and wished him further "victories".
In January 2022, Viktor Medvedchuk was placed under sanctions by the United States, accusing him of involvement in a plot to set up a collaborator government in the wake of a Russian invasion.
Viktor Medvedchuk was sanctioned by the UK government in 2022 in relation to the Russo-Ukrainian War.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs claimed that Viktor Medvedchuk had fled house arrest, while his lawyer claimed that he had been "evacuated to a safe place in Kyiv", after alleged threats had been made to his personal safety.
Viktor Medvedchuk had never left Kyiv, but had been hiding in a luxurious three-story house near Protasiv Yar.
On 18 April 2022 Viktor Medvedchuk released an appeal to the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine to be exchanged for Ukrainian troops and civilians who were trapped in the Siege of Mariupol.
On 10 January 2023, Viktor Medvedchuk was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship alongside three other people's deputies.
On 16 January 2023 Viktor Medvedchuk published an article in the Russian newspaper Izvestia in which he blamed "the collective West" for creating the conditions that lead to what he labelled the "Ukrainian conflict", and advocated for taking Russian interests into account.
In exile Viktor Medvedchuk lost his right to practice law in Ukraine.
Viktor Medvedchuk appealed his disbarment, but his appeal was rejected by a court on 9 February 2024 and on 11 June 2024 by a higher court.
Viktor Medvedchuk is divorced from Marina Lebedeva and Natalya Gavrilyuk.
Viktor Medvedchuk has two daughters: Irina was born on 1982 and with Gavrilyuk, and Daryna was born on 2004 and with Marchenko.
In February 2023 Viktor Medvedchuk confirmed that following his 21 September 2022 prisoner exchange he has lived in Moscow, Russia.
On 13 March 2022, Ukrainian media reported that Viktor Medvedchuk had in his possession a replica of a Pullman dining car.
In Ukraine, Viktor Medvedchuk is considered an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Viktor Medvedchuk has frequently been referred to as "a personal friend of Putin".