“The Institute for the Study of War says the Kremlin is using Viktor Medvedchuk’s interview to justify abandoning peace talks on Ukraine”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
Analysts suggest that Moscow is using Medvedchuk – the founder of the Russian organization Drugaya Ukraina – to make more radical statements than Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kremlin officials themselves, on behalf of Ukraine, and the Russian media has spread them to prepare the Russian population for the Kremlin’s rejection of peace in the near future amid ongoing negotiations between the US, Ukraine and Europe.
ISW continues to believe that the Kremlin is likely to reject any peace proposal that does not meet all of Russia’s demands, including the terms resulting from recent negotiations.
The day before, former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Viktor Medvedchuk, who is connected to the Kremlin and a close personal associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said in an interview with the Russian news agency TASS on January 18 that “there will be no peace in Ukraine in 2026.” He also repeated the claim that “time is on the Kremlin’s side” and emphasized the Kremlin’s determination to achieve its initial war goals without negotiations with Ukraine.
As the Institute for the Study of War notes, Medvedchuk also repeated the Kremlin’s longstanding rhetoric of misrepresenting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a war against the West, claiming that the Ukrainian government is illegitimate, and rejecting Ukrainian elections (which the Kremlin itself demanded to secure a peace deal) on any terms but Russia’s.
Analysts note that Putin and Kremlin officials have repeatedly used this rhetoric to emphasize Russia’s commitment to its initial war aims and its victory theory, which holds that Russia’s military and economy can outlast Ukraine and Western support for Ukraine — a theory the West can help disprove by supporting Ukraine.
These statements by Medvedchuk were made against the background of the ongoing peace negotiations between the United States, the European Union and Ukraine regarding the development of a peace plan, as well as the last round of negotiations between Ukraine and the United States, which took place on January 16 in Miami.
In the past, Medvedchuk was one of the richest people in Ukraine, as well as a politician, the leader of the OPZZH faction in the Verkhovna Rada. The best man of the Russian president is accused of treason and violation of the customs of war. Ukrainian law enforcement officers detained him in April 2022. In September of the same year, Medvedchuk was handed over to Russia as part of a large-scale exchange of prisoners. In January 2023, the President of Ukraine deprived Medvedchuk of his Ukrainian citizenship.