The state agency, known as the
SBU, says that a special reconnaissance and operations unit within the Moscow-based
45th Detached Reconnaissance Regiment of Russian Airborne Troops and military
intelligence units from southern Russia are leading the insurgency.
Their objective is to “cause
bloodshed on the streets of our cities” and kill “100-200” Ukrainians to
provide a pretext for Russia to mass an invasion of eastern Ukraine, said
Vitaliy Naida, a high-ranking member of the SBU’s counter-intelligence
department. Then, he predicted, “in an hour-and-a-half, tanks and armored
personnel carriers of the Russian army will appear on the territory of
Ukraine.”
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Russia has denied involvement
in separatist unrest and terrorist acts in eastern and southern Ukraine.
However, Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said that the Kremlin has received
“many appeals for help” in eastern Ukraine.
On April 16, Putin stated that
“Ukraine is on the brink of civil war” – one that he is doing so much to
instigate.
According to Naida, many
members of the Russian military intelligence and elite airborne units “have 15
years of combat-hardened experience…who have taken part in operations in
Chechnya – (the bloodiest fighting started in 1999) – the Georgia conflict of
2008 and the recent annexation of Crimea.”
It was the same group that
took over the Crimean parliament and other government buildings starting Feb.
27, leading to the March annexation of the peninsula by the Russian Federation.
The Russian intelligence units
hail from the northern Caucuses cities of Novorossiysk, Krasnodar, Adler, and
Rostov-On-Don, where fugitive ex-President of Ukraine Viktor Yankovych has
given three press conferences since he fled Ukraine on Feb. 21-22.
“It’s safe to assume that
Yanukovych is under the control of Russian military intelligence,” added Naida.
Some 40 Russian intelligence
officers and their cultivated agents in Ukraine have been arrested, he said.
The agents include both Russian
and Ukrainian citizens.
The latest arrest came on
April 14, when the SBU
arrested a Russian-recruited and
trained Ukrainian from Melitopol of Zaporizhya Oblast for allegedly carrying out
subversive activity in Luhansk, where pro-Russians have taken the local SBU
building.
He was recruited by a Russian
intelligence officer and in March traveled to Crimea to receive instructions to
commit terrorist acts and create a subversive group among local residents in
Zaporizhya. He was also supposed to collect intelligence on the number of
Ukrainian military in southeastern Ukraine and record their movements.
False start
The news comes amid an
anti-terrorist operation that the Ukrainian government is carrying out in
Donetsk Oblast. So far an SBU captain has died and three more were injured on
April 13 while on an anti-terrorist mission near Slovyansk in northern Donetsk Oblast.
Three Kremlin-backed
pro-Russian separatists were injured when a Ukrainian force retook the
Kramatorsk airfield on April 15 not far from Slovyansk.
Naida of the SBU said that
Russian military intelligence officer Igor Strelkov is commanding terrorist and
subversion activities in eastern and southern Ukraine, including a network of
Russian and Ukrainian saboteur agents.
Strelkov commandeered a group
of 30 Russian subversive soldiers and gave the order “to destroy” the Alpha
group on April 13, said Naida, referring to a successful ambush during which
SBU captain Hennadiy Bilichenko was mortally wounded. The brief firefight took
place at a roadblock near the entrance to Semenovka, a village adjacent
to Slovyansk.
Interim President Oleksandr
Turchynov identified the three wounded in the surprise attack only with their
surnames: Alpha Commander Colonel Kuznetsov, SBU Colonel Kuksa, and Interior
Ministry officer Selikhov.
Communication
that the SBU intercepted after the
ambush allegedly shows Strelkov, the Russian forces leader in Ukraine, being
congratulated for a “job well done on Palm Sunday.”
When asked how could an elite
unit of the Ukrainian SBU have fallen into a trap, Naida hinted that Russia’s
deeply-rooted network of agents were the cause.
U.S. intelligence agencies
have long suspected Ukraine’s military and intelligence services have been entirely
penetrated by the Russian government because, until February, the two countries
were partners on security issues, the Daily Beast’s U.S. State Department beat
reporter wrote on April 16.
Because of this, Russia can
presumably access Ukraine’s encrypted communication lines, thus eliminating the
element of surprise during operations.
Strelkov dossier
In addition to allegedly leading elite Russian soldiers in Ukraine,
Strelkov has recruited agents to occupy government buildings in Kharkiv, the SBU
has stated.
In the beginning
of March he arrived in Crimea and allegedly coordinated the takeover of
Ukrainian military bases and government buildings. He also is suspected of coordinating
the abduction of Ukrainian military personnel, civic activists and other
Ukrainian citizens as well as foreigners who were in Crimea.
He continues to
recruit Ukrainian citizens to use them in subversive actions. Strelkov
allegedly gave personal orders to two Ukrainian citizens to seize and hold the
Kharkiv Oblast Administration, and military facilities and police buildings in
Luhansk with the aim of seizing weapons.
Kyiv Post editor
Mark Rachkevych can be reached at rachkevych@kyivpost.com.
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