The Russian government has opened an investigation into the death threats being issued against the family of Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia’s negotiating team in the 2025 peace talks with Ukraine that were initiated on May 16. Kremlin Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned today, that if it is found that “the source of these threats is Ukraine, the Kiev regime, then the situation is more than outrageous.”
RT reports that Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who heads Kiev’s negotiating team, denied that Ukrainian authorities were behind the threats, when Medinsky questioned him about them. Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation rushed to deflect the report, by claiming that “Despite the fact that these claims contain no evidence that the threats are real—or that they came from Ukraine…” and then charged that “Spreading such accusations is further proof that kremlin [sic] has no real intention of ending the war and is trying to turn negotiations into a farce.”
They lie. Medinsky has been listed in Ukraine’s Myrotvorets kill list since 2018. His entry on the list was updated on May 19, 2025, to add an unmistakable death threat against his wife, children and sister: “They have 4 children. I wonder why Vladimir Rostislavovich [Medinsky] believes that he cannot lose his beloved wife or one of his children, for example, Sasha or Masha. Or his sister, Zuykova Tatiana Rostislavovna, born on August 16, 1975, +79250001608.”
Cited as the source of that threat was a Telegram post by OSINT-Bees, yet another of the interconnected nest of Ukrainian targeting agencies whose job, as OSINT-Bees puts it, is “identifying war criminals of the Russian Federation and assisting in their punishment … [and] collecting information that helps the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Security Service of Ukraine fight the enemy.”
