I’m not Putin’s patsy, says media magnate and ‘Ukrainian patriot’
Yevhen Murayev rejects UK’s accusation that he is a pro-Kremlin stooge as ‘stupidity and nonsense’
A UKRAINIAN politician yesterday denied that the Kremlin was considering installing him as a pro-Kremlin puppet leader in Kyiv, dismissing the UK’s accusation as “stupidity and nonsense”.
The Government yesterday said it had information indicating that Moscow was “looking to install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv” and named Yevhen Murayev, a pro-Russian politician, as a potential candidate.
Mr Murayev, a 45-year old former MP who owns a television channel and founded his own political party after splitting off from Ukraine’s most popular pro-Russian party, said he was “amused” by the allegations.
“I have a hard time digesting stupidity and nonsense. Maybe someone wants to shut down yet another independent TV channel,” he said.
“As someone who has been under Russian sanctions for four years, barred from Russia as a national security threat and whose father got his assets frozen in Russia, I find it hard to comment on the Foreign Office’s statement.”
Analysts were taken aback by the idea of Mr Murayev, a soft-spoken bespectacled man, as the Kremlin’s pick for a puppet government, with some describing him as a “marginal” figure.
Volodymyr Fesenko, a Kyiv-based political analyst, pointed out that Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian tycoon, who counts President Putin as a personal friend, would be a more obvious choice: “Medvdevchuk is definitely much closer to the Kremlin, and they treat him as one of their own.” But Mr Murayev “could be one of the people to seek roles in a new government in case Russia invades. Unfortunately, there are lots of people like Murayev who could form a fifth column in Ukraine.”
Asked about his possible role as a Kremlin-picked leader of a new Ukrainian government in case of an invasion, Mr Murayev said yesterday: “Unless I’ve missed something, they [Russia] have another candidate and they’re not even hiding it. I’m a patriot of my country.” It appeared to be a veiled reference to Mr Medvedchuk, who counts Mr Putin as his daughter’s god-father.
The 67-year old is currently under house arrest in Kyiv after being suspected of funnelling profits from his businesses to Ukraine’s Kremlin-backed separatists, charges that he denies.
The Ukrainian government also shut down three TV channels linked to him that they said were spreading pro
Kremlin propaganda. Mr Putin reportedly took Mr Medvedchuk’s recent legal troubles last year as a personal offence, with some Kremlin watchers even suggesting that it triggered Moscow to move troops to the border with Ukraine last spring.
A Russian speaker from the city of Kharkiv, close to the border, Mr Murayev first entered parliament in 2012 on the ticket of the party of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Kremlin president, who was later toppled by opposition protests in 2014 and fled to Russia.
Mr Murayev remained in Ukraine and has been a proponent of closer ties with Moscow despite the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the Kremlin-fuelled insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
In 2019, he ran for president but dropped out of the race to endorse another Russia-friendly candidate.
Mr Murayev owns Nash, one of the few Ukrainian TV channels with a clear pro-Russian agenda.
It has toed the Kremlin’s line in minute detail in recent months, including supporting Alexander Lukashenko
Belarusian, the dictator despite widespread protests against him.
Mr Murayev appeared on Nash to lash out at the US for using Nato to “occupy Europe after the Second World War” and said Ukraine was stuck in the crossfire between the US and Russia.
He was slapped with Russian sanctions along with most members of Ukrainian parliament in 2018, something he blamed on Ukrainian political infighting.
Regardless, he has stood firm on his view that Ukraine needs to look to Russia, not the West, for support: “Russia is our neighbour, and it’s not going anywhere. We have a common history backing back several centuries.
“I still insist that the conflict needs to be stopped, sanctions gradually lifted, markets, economic ties, factories restarted.”
The Foreign Office did not identify any other members of a potential Ukrainian puppet government but named four Ukrainian politicians – all in exile in Russia – as allegedly maintaining links with Russian intelligence.