President imposes sanctions against ex-Odesa MP Dmytruk

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has imposed sanctions on a number of individuals, including Ukrainian MP Artem Dmytruk.

According to the decision of the National Security and Defense Council, which was approved by the President, the fugitive MP was stripped of his state awards and his assets were blocked.

The fugitive MP from Odesa, Artem Dmytruk, elected from the Servant of the People party, was spotted in London in April walking in Hyde Park with his family in a subdeacon's cassock.

Also in April, Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council recently imposed new sanctions on 71 individuals and 18 organizations involved in pro-Russian activities. The list also includes former MPs from Odesa and Kherson regions who have demonstrated loyalty to Russian policy or acted to the detriment of national interests at various times.

From the Odesa region, the sanctions included Tetiana Plachkova, who used to be a member of the OPFL political party banned in Ukraine and later resigned her parliamentary seat.

The restrictions also affected Artem Dmytruk from Odesa. In 2019, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada from the Servant of the People party.

Since then, he has been plagued by scandals: Dmytruk started a fight near the parliament, in Odesa City Hall, and starred in Anatoliy Shariy's propaganda film about the events in Odesa in 2014. He is a subdeacon of the UOC-MP and joined those who want to preserve the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine.

In November 2021, Dmytruk was expelled from the Servant of the People faction. During the full-scale war, Dmytruk, along with MP Oleksandr Kunytskyi, beat a man in the center of Kyiv.

Then the Prosecutor General's Office opened a criminal case against the MPs, and the victim turned out to be a military man. It was this episode that became the basis for the criminal case that led to Dmytruk's detention.

On August 23, 2024, the politician illegally crossed the border towards Moldova near the Pavlivka checkpoint.

The Prosecutor General's Office intended to serve Dmytruk himself with a notice of suspicion for the attacks on a law enforcement officer and a soldier, and they planned to detain him. In the end, the suspicion was announced in absentia on August 25.

Кирило Бойко