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Ukrainian president revokes citizenship of four lawmakers, including Medvedchuk

Vladimir Zelensky added that "more decisions of this kind" would follow

KIEV, January 11. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said he had stripped four opposition lawmakers - Viktor Medvedchuk, Taras Kozak, Renat Kuzmin and Andrey Derkach - of their Ukrainian citizenship.

"On the basis of case materials, compiled by the Security Service of Ukraine and the State Migration Service of Ukraine, and in accordance with our country’s constitution, I have decided to terminate the citizenship of four individuals," Zelensky said in a video address, published on his Telegram channel late on Tuesday.

The president added that "more decisions of this kind" would follow.

Ukrainian media reported earlier on Tuesday that Zelensky had signed a decree revoking the citizenship of 13 priests of the canonic Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which is now being actively persecuted by the Kiev government. He also terminated the Ukrainian citizenship of former lawmakers Igor Vasilkovsky and Vadim Rabinovich, oligarch Igor Kolomoisky and the head of the Dnepropetrovsk Region territorial defense Gennady Korban.

Medvedchuk, once the head of the political council of the now-banned Opposition Platform - For Life party was actively persecuted by the Ukrainian government lately. On April 12, 2022, he was detained and placed in custody, to be later charged with high treason. In late September, Medvedchuk left Ukraine as a result of a prison swap with the Kiev government.

Kozak and Kuzmin also represented the Opposition Platform in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada. Derkach, an unaffiliated parliamentary, made headlines in May 2022, when he published audio records of phone conversations between, as he claimed, former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko and current US President Joe Biden. The records, if authentic, illustrate Washington’s interference into sovereign affairs of Ukraine.

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Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky

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