Britain has accused the Kremlin of wanting to install a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine, and said Russian intelligence officers had been in contact with former Ukrainian politicians as part of plans for a military offensive.
Britain's foreign ministry said Russia was considering Ukrainian politician Yevhen Murayev to lead a new government, in comments that Russia has denied. Murayev poured cold water on the claim in comments to the Observer newspaper.
Murayev was born in the eastern city of Kharkiv near the Russian border in 1976 and is part of a group of politicians in opposition to the pro-Western leadership that took power after the 2014 Maidan street protests.
He started his political career in Kharkiv as an ally of former President Viktor Yanukovich who fled to Russia after the Maidan uprising.
He started in the Opposition Bloc faction, a party formed from fragments of the Moscow-backed Yanukovich's Party of Regions. In June 2016 he distanced himself from Opposition Bloc and founded his own party, For Life, with a similar ideology.
He launched a party called Nashi in 2018. Murayev was registered as a presidential candidate in the 2019 elections, but withdrew his candidacy before the vote.
Murayev has promoted views that align with Russian narratives on Ukraine. He considered the Maidan protests a Western-backed coup d etat.
He said last year that the war in Ukraine's eastern Donbass region was an internal conflict between the government and rebels, counter to Ukraine and the West view that the conflict between Ukraine and Russian-backed proxies is ongoing.
In 2021 he said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was controlled by the West and suggested that Ukraine might try to regain territory held by Russian-backed separatists by force. Kyiv denies any such plan.
Zelenskiy is a hostage and he is being blackmailed by MI 6, the CIA, or anyone. He said tomorrow they can force him to launch an offensive against the Donbass, which will lead to a full-scale war.
The death of thousands of Ukrainians on one side and the other of the line of demarcation will be a result of drawing Russia into an escalation. Murayev is less prominent than Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Moscow businessman and lawmaker who says Russian President Vladimir Putin is the godfather of his daughter and was thrown under house arrest last year in a case of treason.
Murayev has sway through his TV channel, Nash, which began broadcasting in November 2018 and is officially owned by his father, Volodymyr.
According to a poll by the Razumkov Centre think tank in December 2021, Murayev ranked seventh with 6.3% support among prospective candidates in the next presidential election in 2024. He was fifth in a poll by the Rating group.
He filed an asset declaration in 2017 as a lawmaker. He declared cash assets of $2 million, 1 million euro $1.13 million and 13 million hryvnias $460,971 What does Murayev and others say about Britain's accusations?
Murayev rubbished Britain's claim and told the Observer newspaper that the accusation isn't very logical. He promised more comments in a Facebook post, accompanied by a photoshopped image of him mocked up as James Bond.
He said the country needed new leaders and that he called for an end to dividing Ukraine into pro-Western and pro-Russian politicians.
Russia dismissed Britain's accusation as disinformation Ukraine's government had no immediate comment.
Murayev, for all his pro-Russianness, is not a figure who is very close to the Kremlin, especially compared to Medvedchuk, Fesenko wrote.