Former member of the Federation Council and co-owner of the Sintez group, Leonid Lebedev, in 2021 turned to Vladimir Zelensky with a request to remove him from the sanctions lists, since in 2014 he did not vote for the use of Russian troops in Ukraine. The letter from the businessman turned out to be at the disposal of the Agency.
The appeal to Zelensky published by journalists is written in Ukrainian. In it, Lebedev clarified that in 2014 he was among those who were absent during the voting, at which the Federation Council decided on the use of armed forces in Crimea. In addition, according to the businessman, he was not among the senators who cast their vote in absentia.
The «Agency» drew attention to the publications of various media in 2014, even then, for example, the publication «New Region», wrote that Lebedev did not vote. A year later, he prematurely resigned as a senator after the start of the verification of his declarations. In 2016, the ex-senator claimed that he “blindly voted for the already established decisions,” and “Crimea is part of Russia.”
At the end of July, The Project published a list of businessmen who, «in one way or another» participate in the attack on Ukraine. Lebedev, who found himself in it, turned to the editorial office and provided a copy of the letter to Zelensky. The editors of the publication decided to exclude the co-owner of the Sintez group from the list.