The Slovak authorities granted temporary protected person status to Artem Marchevsky, who at the end of March was included in the sanctions list of the neighboring Czech Republic in connection with his alleged role in organizing a pro-Russian network in the EU countries, which, according to Czech intelligence services, is backed by a former Ukrainian opposition politician and close associate Vladimir Putin Viktor Medvedchuk. About it reports Czech publication Deník N, as well as Reuters.
Marchevsky has citizenship of Ukraine and Israel. Before being included in the Czech sanctions list, he lived near Prague and allegedly directly supervised the activities of the Voice of Europe company, which owns the website of the same name with pro-Russian content. Intelligence services from the Czech Republic and other EU countries, they claim, have established that funds from Russia were also transferred through Voice of Europe to a number of politicians in European countries, in particular in Germany. The Czech authorities imposed sanctions both against the company itself and against two individuals – Marchevsky and Medvedchuk.
After this, as Deník N writes, Marchevsky’s accounts in the Czech Republic were frozen, and he himself had to lose the right to reside in the country. However, according to the publication’s sources, on the same day when it became known about the sanctions, he left for neighboring Slovakia. Citing two sources, the Czech newspaper writes that the Slovak Ministry of Internal Affairs has granted temporary protection status to Artem Marchevsky. This information was confirmed to the publication by Marchevsky’s lawyer Leonid Kushnarenko.
In the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Slovakia statedthat they are looking into the Marchevsky case and will provide more information after the investigation is completed. Thus, the department neither confirmed nor denied the message that he was granted temporary protection status.
Previously, Marchevsky received this status in the Czech Republic, where, after the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, almost any citizen of Ukraine could receive it, subject to a number of conditions. Having fallen under sanctions, Marchevsky was supposed to lose this status in the Czech Republic after 60 days. However, since we are not talking about pan-European, but about national sanctions, theoretically there was no obstacle for him to ask for temporary protection in any other EU country.
- The position of the Slovak government headed by Robert Fico, which came to power last year, regarding the war in Ukraine is somewhat different from the position of most EU countries, which has already led to a cooling in relations with the Czech Republic. Fico insists on the need for immediate peace negotiations, including at the cost of Ukraine losing part of its territories, and also opposes military assistance to Ukraine. The Slovak authorities, however, do not block EU sanctions against Russia, and also say that they support Ukraine’s accession to the European Union.