International secret agents1/9/2024 ![]() ![]() As Der Spiegel points out, the spy held similar positions in both the SUB and the GUR before joining the special forces. In 2016, the army created its own agency, the Special Operations Forces (SSO), supposed to be made up of elite fighters.Ĭhervinsky’s career shows the extent to which the three services can step on each other’s toes. One of the main innovations of the past decade has been the addition of a third branch to Ukraine's burgeoning espionage. The wave of state modernisation that swept the country has not left the intelligence services behind, even if their Soviet heritage – Ukraine had been the KGB’s second-most important centre of operations in the former Soviet republics – has made the task all the more difficult. ![]() These criticisms apply equally to the two main intelligence agencies, the SBU, the counter- espionage service that reports to the interior ministry, and the GUR, the military intelligence agency, he said.Īfter the pro-European Maidan revolution in 2014 and Kyiv’s geopolitical slide to the West, the situation changed. “The SBU was used to spy on political enemies – and was corrupt.” “Before 2014, they were really kind of a joke,” he said. ![]() Hawn said that the Ukrainian intelligence services seemed to have come a long way since their dark days following the fall of the Soviet Union. "Their actions have a strategic impact on the course of the conflict,” he said. Because, notwithstanding the imbroglio behind Chervinsky’s alleged involvement, the fact remains that, faced with the vast Russian spy machine, Ukraine’s secret agents “have shown themselves to be up to the task", according to Jeff Hawn, an expert on Russian security issues and a non-resident fellow at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a think-tank based in Washington, DC. These new developments are a reminder that behind the trench warfare taking place in Ukraine, a shadow war is also being fought between the countries’ intelligence services. Kyiv, for its part, refused to comment on the “revelations” published by the two Western media outlets. When contacted for comment by the Washington Post and Der Spiegel, Chervinsky, speaking through his lawyers, accused “Russian propaganda” of trying to frame him for the Nord Stream sabotage. His defenders, however, hail him as a “great patriot” who pulled off one of the Ukraininan intelligence services’ greatest coups in 2019 after he had succeeded in capturing a “Russian witness” supposedly in possession of evidence showing Russian involvement in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in the skies over the Donbas in 2014. Since then, Chervinsky has been seen by some Ukrainians as a “risk-taker” who endangers national security. This failure pushed the Ukrainian authorities to distance themselves from their spy, claiming that he had gone off on his own and exceeded his prerogatives. Read more Nord Stream 2: Russia-Germany gas pipeline becomes a geopolitical lever At that time, Chervinsky had joined the Ukrainian army's 'special forces', specialists in intelligence and sabotage operations. Instead of flying to Ukraine as promised, he apparently provided the coordinates of a military airport to the Russians, who wasted no time in bombing it. It soon became clear that the pilot remained only too loyal to Moscow. Chervinsky has been in pre-trial detention in Kyiv since April 2023, awaiting trial for his involvement in a high-risk operation that ended in disaster for Ukraine’s intelligence services.Ĭhervinsky is accused of having attempted to recruit a Russian pilot in the summer of 2022 amid a broader campaign to lure potential defectors. This 48-year-old expert in "clandestine actions" was a controversial figure even before his name came up in the pipeline affair. ![]() Roman Chervinsky, a veteran Ukrainian spy, is alleged to have "coordinated" the team of six saboteurs suspected of setting off explosive charges near the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022, several sources – "both Ukrainian and among the international teams of security experts connected to this case" – told the two publications, according to Der Spiegel. The two publications claimed to have identified the Ukrainian "mastermind" behind the explosive operation. New "proof" of Ukrainian involvement in the sabotage of the Nord Stream I and II natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea was published by the Washington Post and German magazine Der Spiegel on Saturday November 11. ![]()
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