Oksana Marchenko, wife of detained Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk, has appealed to the families of two suspected British mercenaries detained by Russian and Donetsk forces, calling on them to ask their government to demand a prisoner exchange of the British nationals for her husband.
"I appeal to the relatives of captured British citizens Aiden Aslin who lives in Nottingham and Sean Pinner, who lives in Bedford. From many reports I learned that Aiden Aslin and Sean Pinner, who acted as part of the units of the 36th Marine Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Mariupol surrendered to the armed forces of Russia and the DPR [Donetsk People's Republic ed.]", Marchenko said in a video address published on YouTube on Saturday.
"I appeal to the relatives and friends of Aiden Aslin and Sean Pinner...It's in your power to ask the prime minister of your country, Boris Johnson, to influence the Ukraine leadership and achieve the release of Aiden and Sean through their exchange [for] the Ukrainian opposition politician detained by the Kiev authorities - my husband, Viktor Medvedchuk", she added.
Commenting on the appeal later in the day on Telegram, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that Mr Johnson, who "recently travelled to Kiev, is more than likely aware about the fate of the subjects of her royal majesty. He will not be slow in answering. And [Foreign Secretary] Liz Truss will tell us what Britons were doing there in the first place".
Medvedchuk, 67, was detained by the Ukrainian Security Forces in a "lightning-fast and dangerous multi-level special operation" on Tuesday. The opposition leader went into hiding in late February after threats had been made against his life, breaking the terms of his house arrest while facing "treason" charges levelled against him last year.
In a Telegram address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offered to exchange Medvedchuk for Ukrainian troops taken prisoner by Russian forces. Moscow slammed Medvedchuk's persecution, calling it "absolutely politically motivated" and "built on absolutely far-fetched pretexts."
On Thursday, a Ukrainian court announced the seizure of "154 objects of movable and immovable property" belonging to Medvedchuk and his wife, including vehicles, plots of lands, homes, apartments, parking spaces and a yacht.
Medvedchuk was a staple of Ukrainian politics since the mid-1990s, serving as a lawmaker, and then as chief of staff for former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma until 2005. He is also a tycoon, with major investments in energy and media. He formally returned to politics in 2019, after winning a mandate in the parliamentary election.
A long-time critic of the February 2014 Euromaidan coup d'etat, Medvedchuk has marked strong opposition to Ukraine's entry into the European Union, once suggesting that "the Third Reich wanted the same thing from Ukraine that the EU does today". In 2014 and 2015, he became involved in negotiations and the exchange of prisoners in the civil war in the Donbass between Ukrainian troops and independence-seeking militias. He has called on Kiev to negotiate with the Donbass to return its control over the territory, and accused the US and its allies of meddling in Ukraine's internal affairs and ties with its neighbours, including Russia.
In early 2021, Medvedchuk was sanctioned under Ukraine's "terror financing" laws for alleged business activities in the Donbass. In May of that year, he was accused of "high treason" over business in Crimea, whose status as part of Russia Kiev vehemently contests. He was placed under house arrest in Kiev.
The United States Treasury sanctioned Medvedchuk in early 2022 over his suspected links to Moscow, including alleged work "at the direction of the Russian Federal Security Service" to engage "in Russian government-directed influence activities to destabilise Ukraine." The Treasury provided no evidence to back up its allegations. Since his arrest this week, Ukrainian and Western media have repeatedly brought up the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the godfather to Medvedchuk's youngest daughter in a bid to implicate him as a "Russian puppet". Medvedchuk has defended his political and personal ties to the Russian president, saying he has used them in the interests of Ukraine.
Medvedchuk and other opposition lawmakers called for an investigation into the network of US-sponsored activities at Ukraine-based biolabs in 2020, alleging that the creation of a Level 3 lab storing human pathogens may have been an indication of plans to carry out experiments on people.
"This is the main reason for the creation of US biolabs in Ukraine, serving as an opportunity to carry out the most dangerous kinds of studies, including studies on human beings, which are prohibited under US laws, but allowed in Ukraine, due to problems in Ukrainian legislation, but to a greater extent, to Ukraine's foreign control by the United States", he said in a parliamentary inquiry at the time.