Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a briefing that Vladimir Putin personally insisted on the extradition of one of the prisoners, Anadolu reports .
“The goal was to change 200 people. All these people are now in Turkey, they are our guests. Vladimir Putin especially insisted on one name. We sent this man to Russia,” Erdogan said. He did not name this person, but among the prisoners extradited by Kiev to Russia was Putin's godfather - Viktor Medvedchuk, probably, it was about him.
The exchange of prisoners took place on September 21 in the evening. 200 Ukrainian soldiers, including Azovstal defense commanders, were exchanged for 55 Russians and Viktor Medvedchuk. Ramzan Kadyrov was "extremely dissatisfied" with the exchange. In Z-publics, this event also caused an uproar.
Medvedchuk was detained by the SBU on April 12. His wife Oksana Marchenko and he himself offered Putin to exchange him for the defenders and residents of Mariupol, but the Kremlin refused to do this, saying that he was not a Russian citizen. “Medvedchuk is not a Russian citizen. It has nothing to do with the special military operation. He is a foreign politician. We don’t know at all whether he himself wants some kind of Russian participation in resolving this libelous situation against him, ”Peskov said then.
In 2004, Putin, together with Dmitry Medvedev's wife Svetlana, baptized Medvedchuk's daughter. The media wrote that Medvedchuk was close to the Russian president and often met with him.
Since 2018, Medvedchuk has led the pro-Russian party Opposition Platform – For Life in Ukraine. This summer, her activities in the country were banned as "aimed at undermining the sovereignty of Ukraine."
In 2019, Medvedchuk was a member of the trilateral contact group to resolve the situation in Donbas. In October 2021, the Ukrainian authorities suspected him of financing terrorism. According to the SBU, in 2014 he organized a scheme for the supply of coal from the "DNR" and "LNR" to the territory controlled by Ukraine.