Special Counsel Robert Mueller is getting a crash course in Ukrainian politics as his investigation combs over Michael Cohen’s ties to Ukraine.
But according to former Radical Party member of parliament Andrii Artemenko, who finished testifying in the Mueller probe last week, Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko knew in advance about a “peace plan” that Artemenko delivered to the White House in January 2017.
“(Tymoshenko) had been informed about my peace initiative because I discussed with her, my colleague, the possibility of promoting the peace plan,” Artemenko told the Kyiv Post in a telephone interview from the United States. “This was a couple of conversations where we discussed how we can work together against corruption of (President Petro) Poroshenko and prepare for the future.”
Natasha Lysova, a Batkivschyna spokeswoman, declined to directly confirm or deny Artemenko’s statement, instead stating that “Tymoshenko has consistently fought against corruption. It’s one of her top priorities and demand of Ukrainian people.”
“But Artemenko’s quote isn’t true and sounds like nonsense,” Lysova added.
Artemenko completed testimony on June 11 before a federal grand jury in Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. The activities of Michael Cohen, an attorney for President Donald Trump, have caught the investigation’s attention amid allegations of influence peddling and Russian meddling.
“They were asking about my background, my vision of the political situation in Ukraine, and about the future of Ukraine,” Artemenko said.
He added that he was asked about “the meeting with (personal lawyer of U.S. President Donald Trump) Michael Cohen and (Trump business associate) Felix Sater in January 2017.”
Artemenko was stripped of his position in parliament and his citizenship in May 2017, months after he proposed a so-called “peace plan” destined for the desk of then-U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. At the time of the plan’s release, Tymoshenko, now a frontrunner in the 2019 presidential elections, was travelling to the U.S. for brief, ambush-style meetings with President Trump.
Under Artemenko’s plan, Ukraine would have “leased” Crimea to Russia for 100 years in exchange for Russia’s withdrawal from Donbas and a change in government in Kyiv.
He added that he had given over hundreds of documents, emails, and text messages to federal prosecutors.
“I’ve been cooperative and open because I have nothing to hide, my power and my future depend on my publicity and that’s why I’ve been open and straight,” he added.
Russian ties
Artemenko has been active in the Ukrainian business world since the late 1990s. In 1998, he headed Kyiv’s TsKA soccer club for one year, replaced the next year by minigarch Viktor Topolov.
In 2008, Topolov financed a $110 million ethanol project in Cherkasy Oblast that Cohen worked on.
Artemenko said that while he and Topolov were acquainted, the link was a coincidence.
“I have not seen or communicated with him for 16 years,” he said.
From there, Artemenko worked in the private sector in the United States, Canada, and Ukraine, getting involved in aviation as well as various import-export projects.
But over the years, Artemenko’s ties to the far right wing of Ukrainian politics grew. He shared a jail cell with Mykola Karpyuk, a Right Sector activist who was imprisoned by Russia in 2014 and sentenced to 20 years in prison, on bogus charges that were met with international condemnation.
Artemenko, by 2014 a people’s deputy and a main financier of right-wing group Right Sector, told the Kyiv Post that he began to travel to Russia as an unofficial emissary to rescue Karpyuk.
Artemenko said that he met with an unnamed Russian Duma deputy as well as the Russian human rights ombudsman, Tatyana Moskalkova.
He added that in late 2016, he brought the infamous “peace plan” along with him on a trip to Russia.
“We discussed how they could help to release our prisoners, Mykola and others, and I told them about the theoretic possibility of being part of this peace plan,” Artemenko said.
An attorney for Karpyuk, Ilya Novikov, told the Kyiv Post that he had never met Artemenko and was unaware of the former MP making a trip to Russia in connection with the case.
“Any channels are worth trying,” Novikov said. “The situation is so bad from the beginning, that nothing can make it worse.”
Going nuclear
Artemenko claims that he made many of his contacts on Capitol Hill via a plan to use U.S. money to modernize Ukraine’s nuclear infrastructure, a project that Felix Sater worked on as well.
Ukraine remains heavily reliant on Russian nuclear fuel, in spite of efforts by U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric to cut a deal with state-owned nuclear power company Energoatom to replace the Kremlin’s share of the reactor supply market.
Artemenko said that he had been asked about his ties with former Congressman Curt Weldon as well as current Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.
A draft of the project that Artemenko sent to the Kyiv Post suggested that billions of dollars would be required to refurbish and maintain Ukraine’s nuclear electric power plants – a profitable proposition.
Artemenko added that he still had sky-high domestic political ambitions, at one point catching himself after saying that he wanted to run for president in 2019.
He added that he had appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to have his citizenship restored, hoping for a positive ruling by the end of the year.
“I’m preparing for the 2019 parliamentary election,” he said, adding that he has a vision of Ukraine as an “independent, unblocked country.”
“We’re not going to be a member of the EU, NATO, or of a Russian alliance,” he said. “We have to be an independent country.”
