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Ivan Bakanov is reforming and cleaning the SBU (photo: Vitaliy Nosach / RBC-Ukraine)
A month ago, on April 14, the Ukrainian Security Service arrested its senior official, General Valery Shaitanov, accusing him of working for the FSB. He is also accused of preparing an attempt against Chechen volunteer Adam Osmayev, and the Interior Ministry hinted that Minister Arsen Avakov would become the Alfovets’ next victim.
At the same time, Shaitanov is not the only SBU employee suspected of treason. According to official statistics, there were more than fifteen hundred people. How the SBU finds and exposes the “traitors” in its ranks, in the RBC-Ukraine material.
Since 2014, the SBU in its ranks has identified 1,639 employees involved in crimes against the foundations of national security, the agency said at the request of RBC-Ukraine.
Most of them are the ones who changed the oath and moved to the side of the Russian Federation during the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Among them, the most famous are ex-commander of Donetsk command of special forces “Alpha” Alexander Khodakovsky, who became one of the leaders of the “DPR”, and former SBU colonel Leonid Pasechnik, head of the “LPR”.
The Ukrainian Security Service itself carried out an investigation against 26 of its former employees. The investigation is ongoing with respect to six people, with five of them wanted. So far, the court has sentenced only three: two have received a guilty verdict, another former “hump” is exempt from criminal liability.
The intelligence service found most of the “moles” outside the walls of the department. The espionage and treason suspects were exposed in the Defense Ministry, the Interior Ministry and the National Guard, as well as in the Cabinet of Ministers, where he met Prime Minister Stanislav Yezhov’s translator.
However, it is the statements about “Russian spies” in the ranks of the Ukrainian Security Service that raise legitimate questions about the security of state secrets in Ukraine. Furthermore, it was in these processes that ordinary employees did not appear, but the superior command of the special services.
Officers under suspicion
SBU General Detained Valery Shaitanov Born in the Russian Arkhangelsk region, he graduated from the Ryazan Higher Airborne School, but developed a successful career in the Ukrainian Security Service. He was Alpha’s first deputy chief, creating and overseeing the command unit, known as Shaitanbat, which had proven effective at the ATO.
Shaitanov received general shoulder straps from President Petro Poroshenko in 2015. The arrest of “Alfovets” in April this year on suspicion of treason came as a surprise to most colleagues, who knew of his active involvement in military operations. in eastern Ukraine.
Shaitanov was arrested on suspicion of working for the FSB (facebook.com/SecurSerUkraine)
Statements of “stage arrest” or political retaliation also began to ring. After the arrest, they also recalled that it was Shaitanov’s unit who participated in the high-profile arrest of Gennady Korban in the Dnieper on October 30, 2015.
“An international group worked on the Shaitanov case and there can be no complaints against the SBU, as there is undeniable evidence. It is another matter whether it was necessary to do it this way (refers to public detention – ed.), but this was decided by the SBU leadership at its discretion, “explains a source familiar with the case materials to RBC-Ukraine.
He claims that the fact of Shaitanov’s work has been established as part of a group of people “controlled from Russia”. According to him, the detainee had previously been allowed to express “pro-Russian statements” in the service and for some time was even suspended from work after Euromaidan. But then he was returned to “Alpha” command by decision of former SBU chief Vasily Gritsak.
“I am not saying that Gritsak acted under the influence of Shaitanov or in the interest of the aggressor, but his advisers, who brought Shaitanov to Gritsak, assured him that he was a person who could carry out any task assigned to him,” the source said. . .
The major general was arrested by decision of the Shevchenkovsky district court on April 15. His lawyer, Valery Lavrenov, appealed, but now he says he no longer defends Shaitanov.
“Today I am no longer your advocate, I do not represent your interests. Our cooperation stopped two weeks ago (in late April, – ed.), “Said the lawyer, refusing to reveal the reasons for such a decision. The consideration of the appeal for the arrest of an alleged treason was broken several times and was finally scheduled for May 28.
In addition to Shaitanov, two other SBU generals await sentencing in the Ukrainian courts. Then, in November 2014, a former head of the state intelligence department in the field of information security was arrested in Kharkov Vladimir Bik. Former SBU chief Valentin Nalyvaichenko said that this general “was number 3 in the SBU hierarchy” and “met and accompanied representatives of the Russian FSB” who came to Ukraine during the Maidan.
SBU General accused of treason is free (photo: Valentin Rybin / Facebook)
On these charges, the counterintelligence filed a lawsuit against Nalyvaychenko and demanded a rebuttal and moral compensation. But in February 2020, the Pechersk court denied Bick a lawsuit to protect honor and dignity.
The general himself, accused of high treason (article 111 of the Penal Code) and unauthorized abandonment of his workplace (article 407 of the Penal Code), was arrested and remained in custody for almost three years; only in October 2017 was he released under house arrest.
In addition, the court softened the preventive measure to a personal obligation, and after a time canceled it. Now the general has no obligation established by the court, but appears regularly at meetings at the Shevchenkovsky court in Kiev. The next one is scheduled for June 26, the trial has been ongoing for 4.5 years.
“General Beek’s case is false false … We have not yet reached half of the study of those materials that were” thrown “by the accusation of this criminal process, so I believe that nothing will happen in the near future (meaning sentence – ed.) “, Said RBC-Ukraine, his lawyer, Valentin Rybin.
The same attorney defends another SBU general accused of serious crimes. We are talking about Alexandra Shchegoleva – Former head of the Main Directorate of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kiev and the Kiev region. It was he, according to investigators, who led the “anti-terrorist operation” of law enforcement officers in the Kiev Maidan and, in particular, the assault on the Chamber of Trade Unions.
In March 2015, the major general was arrested and placed under house arrest, but in August of the same year, Schegolev was transferred to a preventive detention center by decision of the court. Shchegolev remained in the dungeons for almost four years: the court released him from custody under house arrest in June 2019.
Schegolev directed the “commander-in-chief” of the Kiev SBU during the Maidan (photo: UNIAN)
Soon, the court once again relaxed the preventive measure and, at this time, the SBU general accused of serious crimes has a personal obligation. Consideration of his case is also far from complete and he is at the stage of questioning witnesses and studying the materials of the accusation.
“In the cases against Generals Bik and Schegolev, it is clear that they were inspired. I am more than sure that these are political cases,” says his lawyer Rybin.
The situation is different in another process led by Rybin. Your client former SBU counterintelligence captain Andrey Vaskovsky He pleaded guilty to treason, received a light sentence, and was transferred to the Russian Federation on September 7, 2019 during the “prisoner exchange.”
According to the materials of the case, which for some time were publicly available in the Unified Registry of Judicial Decisions, the Ukrainian counterintelligence officer Vaskovsky since 2016 worked for the FSB and transmitted secret information to him. Including those related to the cooperation of the SBU and British intelligence.
In March of this year, a counterintelligence officer convicted of high treason was arrested from his bank accounts. The Brovarsky District Court of the Kiev region saw no obstacle to satisfying Vaskovsky’s request.
For the time being, he managed to avoid Ukrainian prison and SBU lieutenant colonel Vasily Prozorova. In 2014-2015, he was an expert consultant at the SBU Counter-Terrorism Center and was in Donbass.
In March 2019, he gave a press conference in Moscow, where he admitted that since April 2014, “for ideological reasons”, he worked for the Russian special services and transmitted secret information to them. He fled Ukraine in December 2017 and has been on the wanted list ever since, occasionally appearing as an “Ukraine expert” in the Russian propaganda media.
Former Proshorov Prozorov is a frequent guest on Russian channels (photo: video screenshot)
In Ukraine, he was suspected of high treason, desertion, illegal handling of weapons and the use of special means of tacit information. The court gave permission for his arrest, in addition, the SBU is trying in court to deprive Prozorov and his wife of the right to an official apartment in Zaporozhye.
Experts interviewed by RBC-Ukraine point out that despite isolated cases of high-profile flaws, Ukraine’s intelligence service is basically quite effective at identifying moles in its ranks.
Ideological traitors
The former deputy head of the Ukrainian Security Service, Major General Viktor Yagun, considers the “Shaitanov case” to be a brilliant operation of the Ukrainian special services, and not foreign intelligence.
“It is not true when they say that this operation would not have been possible without foreign partners. In fact, the operation was carried out there on a completely different person who would eventually bring Shaitanov anyway. Our secret services brought an undercover officer into the entourage of this man, who has become the main source of information, “he said.
According to him, the foreign partners simultaneously carried out an investigation against FSB officer Igor Egorov and provided information about him to his Ukrainian colleagues in the Shaitanov case. Yagun is sure that the SBU would still have followed the trail of the general suspect, but “not so fast and not with such conclusive evidence.”
In turn, SBU chief Ivan Bakanov called this case “the most important exposure of the Security Service.” He also noted that the work continues to improve the effectiveness of domestic counterintelligence.
At the same time, when asked about how Shaitanov managed to hide his FSB job for more than six years after Maidan, the department’s former vice president, Viktor Yagun, gave an example from Soviet intelligence officer Kim Philby. As an employee of British intelligence, this agent carried his colleagues by the nose for almost 30 years, transmitting secret data to curators in the USSR.
Experts believe the SBU cleanup is successful (photo: Mikhail Palinchak / POOL / UNIAN)
The main reason that leads the special services to move to the side of the Russian Federation, experts believe in the psychological characteristics of some Ukrainian law enforcement officers.
“I spoke to traitors of former SBU officers who sided with the enemy, and it turned out that for them psychologically it was not treason. For them, moving to the FSB, for example, to Crimea, was like going from an enforcement agency from law to law: from the police, to the Ukrainian Security Service or from the Security Service, to intelligence. Everything is a miscalculation in patriotic education, because people did not understand that they lived in another state and served their interests, “says General Yagun.
Lt. Gen. Alexander Skipalsky, who was twice deputy chief of the SBU in 1997-1998 and 2006-2007, also points to a problem such as the presence of relatives in Russia among many members of the Ukrainian intelligence service.
“It just so happened that many certainly have relatives there. But if (SBU employee – ed.) Family members work in Russia and are also close to special services, so that employee cannot be used in “sharp” areas. But if a person is honest and decent, then they need to identify a place where they would not be blackmailed and used because of their dependency and relationships with family members, “Lt. Gen. Skipalsky said.
The events of the Maidan and the war in the Donbass put the Ukrainian special services in a difficult position. Most of the leaders appointed during the time of Viktor Yanukovich fled to Russia, carrying with them secret documentation. In fact, since 2014, the SBU has been forced from scratch to build its own identity as a professional agency that provides state security.
At one stage, he also dealt with economic and political issues and coordinated the ATO in Donbass. At the same time, the reform of the Security Service of Ukraine is planned in the near future, which can strengthen the achievements already created for six years and disrupt the working mechanisms efficiently.
