Everyone has already had a chance to point their fingers at Nadia Savchenko, who has gone a little too far lately with her controversial statements.  Ukrainian society responded with indignation, expressing skepticism about both her latest hunger strike, and her words of the “similar ideals” of Maidan protesters and the so-called Anti-Maidan movement, and her will to talk heart to heart with the Kremlin puppets in Donbas – Plotnitkiy and Zakharchenko, moreover, the "need" to ask them for forgiveness, and a proposal to change as soon as possible the conditional hundred Ukrainian hostages held captive by pro-Russian militants on a conditional one thousand of separatists, many of which only exist in the fevered brain of the “LPR” and “DPR” leaders...

Since the time when Nadia began to actively destroy her own political capital, there have been many assumptions that the former captive of the Kremlin is nothing else but a puppet in someone's well-orchestrated performance. Of course, someone also said that one should not look for any conspiracy theories in eccentric speeches of the "Bullet", who has just returned from captivity, having neglected a period of rehabilitation, adding that these statements can be explained quite simple – with common ignorance. Someone tended to  believe that Savchenko’s sharp speeches, sometimes balancing on the brink of adequacy, are the fruit of manipulation of the real leader of the Batkivshchyna party [Yulia Tymoshenko], wishing to quickly "drown" her new rival. But someone could not help but notice that Nadia Savchenko has mainly been voicing "reconciling" theses of the retired gray cardinal of the Ukrainian politics, Viktor Medvedchuk, who also happens to have Vladimir Putin as his daughter’s godfather. This assumption pushes for another version...

Nadia chose not to explain, why it was these names she called rather than, say, the names of Ukrainian Ombudswoman Valeria Lutkovska or the President’s envoy for the peaceful settlement of the situation in Donbas Iryna Gerashchenko

... Today, Nadia has voiced an offer, which fits the latter version the most.

Savchenko said that if men are failing to reach an agreement with the “LPR-DPR” militants, then women can do it. Apparently mindful of past mistakes, she didn’t name herself, or her sister Vira, as the candidates for negotiations. Instead, she called the names of Ukraine’s First Lady, Maryna Poroshenko, and the wife of ... Viktor Medvedchuk (who is also Putin’s godmother), a TV presenter Oksana Marchenko. Nadia chose not to explain, why it was these names she called rather than, say, the names of Ukrainian Ombudswoman Valeria Lutkovska or the President’s envoy for the peaceful settlement of the situation in Donbas Iryna Gerashchenko. But this is not surprising. It seems that it’s not logic and rationality which is most important in her statements but the number of high-profile headlines and news stories for the Russian media.

However, if it was the Russian president’s friend who put these messages into the mouth of the Ukrainian MP and a female pilot, then Savchenko’s choice of negotiators becomes clear. And so does an apparent attempt of Leonid Kuchma’s "crisis manager" to return to the Big Game. Perhaps not everyone remembers that in 2005, when Medvedchuk (who provided all possible assistance to Viktor Yanukovych in the presidential race of 2004) said that he would not run for president in the next election (in four years), this only made Ukrainians grin malevolently. Their Schadenfreude was confirmed by the actual poll figures later, at the parliamentary elections of 2006 when the ex-chief of presidential staff (during Kuchma’s cadency) saw no support of the Ukrainians. The party called Ne Tak, where Viktor Medvedchuk was Number 3 in the list, has not even overcome the limits of statistical error: according to various exit polls, the party gained some 1.1% to 1.9% of the votes.

Putin’s friend undertook his next attempt to return from political oblivion in 2008, spinning via some of his allies the information that he was allegedly generously offered some unprecedentedly high positions by the then-President Viktor Yushchenko. He also claimed he turned down the post of the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. Of course, he never bothered to explain why and for what reasons. The obscenely protracted "Minsk process" only managed to once again confirm proximity of the Ukrainian "mediator" to the Russian leader, who had started the conflict in Donbas

The obscenely protracted "Minsk process" only managed to once again confirm proximity of the Ukrainian "mediator" to the Russian leader, who had started the conflict in Donbas

Four years later, in April of 2012, a forgotten politician tried to achieve a revival in a new incarnation - as the initiator of the creation of a "civic movement". But, whatever Medvedchuk has ever tried to create, it always came out as SDPU(o) [The Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united)]. Not to mention the fact the Kremlin openly loomed behind the orderly ideas of "civil society activists", in particular, on Ukraine's accession to the Customs Union and the principle of a federal structure of the state.

It seemed that Viktor Medvedchuk’s shining hour came in June 2014, when he acted as a mediator for preliminary negotiations between the OSCE, Kyiv and representatives of the "LPR" and "DPR" gangs. However, the obscenely protracted "Minsk process" only managed to once again confirm proximity of the Ukrainian "mediator" to the Russian leader, who had started the conflict in Donbas.

It seems that today, through the words of Nadia Savchenko, Putin’s friend is trying to convince the voters that it’s his wife who could "reconcile" Kyiv and Donbas. Perhaps, Medvedchuk is trying to use a combination of ratings of the "Bullet" (some pro-Russian agents in Ukraine believe that the level of public confidence in the former captive is very high) and the image of a TV presenter Oksana Marchenko (say, if the masses see her on live TV shows than they could as well give their support in the elections, who knows…)

However, the main objective is still seen behind all this tinsel. It’s a burning desire, through promoting his wife to the political arena, to return there, himself. And it’s getting increasingly funny to contemplate these attempts of the once mighty "dinosaur", who has long been written off for scrap and yet failed understand after all these years, what simple Ukrainian people really need.

Tatiana Urbanskaya