NYT: How Top Spies in Ukraine Changed the Nation's Path
Biwah
January 17, 2005
How Top Spies in Ukraine Changed the Nation's Path
By C. J. CHIVERS
Photo 1:
http://tinyurl.com/4jjxf
Caption:
James Hill for The New York Times
Lt. Gen. Sergei Popkov, commander of the Interior Ministry's troops, was
ready to confront protesters, but a clash was averted.
Photo 2:
http://tinyurl.com/4qso7
Caption:
James Hill for The New York Times
THE OPPOSITION Protesters cheered at a Nov. 28 rally at the central square
of Kiev before marching to the central election office. Security officials
averted a crackdown.
KIEV, Ukraine, Jan. 16 - As protests here against a rigged presidential
election overwhelmed the capital last fall, an alarm sounded at Interior
Ministry bases outside the city. It was just after 10 p.m. on Nov. 28.
More than 10,000 troops scrambled toward trucks. Most had helmets, shields
and clubs. Three thousand carried guns. Many wore black masks. Within 45
minutes, according to their commander, Lt. Gen. Sergei Popkov, they had
distributed ammunition and tear gas and were rushing out the gates.
Kiev was tilting toward a terrible clash, a Soviet-style crackdown that
could have brought civil war. And then, inside Ukraine's clandestine
security apparatus, strange events began to unfold.
While wet snow fell on the rally in Independence Square, an undercover
colonel from the Security Service of Ukraine, or S.B.U., moved among the
protesters' tents. He represented the successor agency to the K.G.B., but
his mission, he said, was not against the protesters. It was to thwart the
mobilizing troops. He warned opposition leaders that a crackdown was afoot.
Simultaneously, senior intelligence officials were madly working their
secure telephones, in one instance cooperating with an army general to
persuade the Interior Ministry to turn back.
The officials issued warnings, saying that using force against peaceful
rallies was illegal and could lead to prosecution and that if ministry
troops came to Kiev, the army and security services would defend civilians,
said an opposition leader who witnessed some of the exchanges and Oleksander
Galaka, head of the military's intelligence service, the G.U.R., who made
some of the calls.
Far behind the scenes, Col. Gen. Ihor P. Smeshko, the S.B.U. chief, was
coordinating several of the contacts, according to Maj. Gen. Vitaly
Romanchenko, leader of the military counterintelligence department, who said
that on the spy chief's orders he warned General Popkov to stop. The
Interior Ministry called off its alarm.
Details of these exchanges, never before reported, provide insight into a
hidden factor in the so-called Orange Revolution, the peaceful protests that
overturned an election and changed the political course of a post-Soviet
state.
Throughout the crisis an inside battle was waged by a clique of Ukraine's
top intelligence officers, who chose not to follow the plan by President
Leonid D. Kuchma's administration to pass power to Prime Minister Viktor F.
Yanukovich, the president's chosen successor. Instead, these senior
officers, known as the siloviki, worked against it.
Such a position is a rare occurrence in former Soviet states, where the
security agencies have often been the most conservative and ruthless
instruments of state power.
Interviews with people involved in these events - opposition leaders,
chairmen of three intelligence agencies and several of their senior
officers, Mr. Kuchma, a senior Western diplomat, members of Parliament, the
interior minister and commander of the ministry's troops - offer a view of
the siloviki's work.
The officers funneled information to Mr. Kuchma's rivals, provided security
to opposition figures and demonstrations, sent choreographed public signals
about their unwillingness to follow the administration's path and engaged in
a psychological tug-of-war with state officials to soften responses against
the protests.
Ultimately, the intelligence agencies worked - usually in secret, sometimes
in public, at times illegally - to block the fraudulent ascension of Mr.
Yanukovich, whom several of the generals loathe. Directly and indirectly,
their work supported Viktor A. Yushchenko, the Western-oriented candidate
who is now the president-elect.
Many factors that sustained the revolution that formed around Mr. Yushchenko
are well known. They include Western support, the protesters' resolve, cash
from wealthy Ukrainians, coaching by foreign activists who had helped topple
presidents in Georgia and Serbia, the unexpected independence of the Supreme
Court and cheerleading by a television station, Channel 5, which Mr. Kuchma
never shut down.
Each influenced the outcome to various degrees. None by itself seems
decisive. The full extent of the siloviki's role is unknown, although Oleg
Ribachuk, Mr. Yushchenko's chief of staff, called it "a very important
element" that aided the opposition "professionally and systemically."
"They were doing this like a preventive operation," he said.
Opposition Inside the S.B.U.
The support did not start with the protests. Long before the election, the
siloviki and the opposition opened quiet lines of communication, including
General Smeshko's assignment last summer of an S.B.U. general as secret
liaison to Mr. Ribachuk.
The 38,000-member S.B.U. is Ukraine's descendant of the Soviet K.G.B., and
has been sullied by its reputation for blackmail, arms trading and links
with Russian security services and organized crime. It remains highly
factionalized, with cliques loyal to different political camps, and with
remnant ties to its old masters in Moscow.
Its previous chairman, Leonid Derkach, was fired under international
pressure after being accused of organizing the sale of radar systems to
embargoed Iraq. Mr. Kuchma appointed General Smeshko, a generally
Western-oriented official and a career military intelligence officer as
S.B.U. chairman in 2003. The general had previously been posted to embassies
in Washington and Zurich; the move was regarded as an effort to smooth
relations with the West.
Some of the siloviki who worked against the fraudulent election and resisted
the crackdown are part of General Smeshko's military intelligence circle and
had spent parts of their careers working in Western countries or as liaisons
to Western governments.
Mr. Ribachuk said that he ultimately had several S.B.U. contacts, and they
met regularly, sometimes nightly. The officers leaked him documents and
information from Mr. Kuchma and Mr. Yanukovich's offices, he said, and were
sources for much of the material used in the opposition's media campaign.
Whether the collaboration was a convergence of political aims, or a
pragmatic understanding by the siloviki that Mr. Yushchenko's prospects were
rising, is subject to dispute. Yulia Tymoshenko, another of Mr. Yushchenko's
closest allies, said many S.B.U. officials, including General Smeshko,
merely hedged their bets. "This was a very complicated game," she said.
Mr. Ribachuk saw it differently. "They are clearly our supporters," he said.
"They risked their lives and careers."
The officers themselves express several motivations.
One, said Lt. Gen. Igor Drizhchany, who runs the S.B.U.'s legal department,
was simple. "At all times we talked of our desire to prevent the shedding of
blood," he said.
But there are also signs that among some officers a desire to block Mr.
Yanukovich was authentic. Having been prime minister for two years, Mr.
Yanukovich was well known. Several S.B.U. officers said the premier, who was
once convicted of robbery and assault and has close links to the corrupt
eastern businessmen who have acquired much of Ukraine's material wealth, was
a man they preferred not to serve, especially if he were to take office by
fraud.
S.B.U. officials and Mr. Ribachuk also said that roughly a week before the
Nov. 21 election, General Smeshko was disgusted enough after a personal
meeting with Mr. Yanukovich that he sought to resign, and vowed never to
work for the premier.
Mr. Kuchma did not accept the resignation, telling the spy chief that if he
left, then a general loyal to Mr. Yanukovich would assume the post, and the
nation would risk bloodshed, General Smeshko and Mr. Kuchma said.
It is not clear whether the president was certain of this, or simply
outmaneuvered General Smeshko to avoid pre-election turmoil. But the spy
chief stayed on.
Sending Signals
The siloviki's unease with Mr. Yanukovich's candidacy deepened on Nov. 21
when early results indicated the premier was winning the election, but
through widespread fraud.
The S.B.U.'s leadership met in General Smeshko office. Among those present
were General Romanchenko, General Drizhchany, Maj. Gen. Oleksander
Sarnatskyi, the chief of S.B.U.'s cabinet, and Col. Valery Kondratyuk, chief
of liaison to foreign intelligence services.
The group contemplated a public resignation, but decided to try steering the
gathering forces from a clash, and to fight from within. "Today we can save
our faces or our epaulettes, or we can try to save our country," General
Romanchenko and General. Sarnatskyi said they remembered the spy chief
saying.
Whether the full extent of the position and activities of the S.B.U.
leadership was understood at this point by Mr. Kuchma is unclear; S.B.U.
officers said that given the competing factions in their service, and its
infiltration by Russian agents, elements of its work were certainly known.
Kiev was tense. As protests began on Nov. 21, the opposition had the money
and organization for long-term civil disobedience. General Popkov, the
interior commander, said he knew this, and had scheduled an exercise that
massed 15,000 troops in the capital and nearby. He sent several thousand to
barricades and posts at government buildings, and kept more than 10,000 in
reserve.
The government swiftly tried drawing the intelligence chiefs into an image
of state solidarity. On Nov. 22, the prosecutor general's office released a
statement scolding the opposition for organizing the rally. It said the
authorities and the S.B.U. were prepared "to firmly put an end to any
lawlessness."
General Smeshko said he was furious and called the prosecutor to tell him
not to speak for the S.B.U. "It was a falsification," he said. The S.B.U.
countered with a statement saying that it disagreed with the prosecutor,
that citizens had the right to exercise political freedoms and that
political problems could be solved only by a peaceful path.
It was a public crack in Ukraine's law enforcement bodies, and an omen.
On Nov. 24, when the election commission met to certify Mr. Yanukovich's
nominal win, Kiev was so fully blockaded that Mr. Kuchma was unable to work
in his office.
He called for a meeting outside the city, where his government celebrated
its win and several politicians declared that if crowds continued to block
the government, troops should disperse them, three people in the meeting
said.
As General Smeshko sat quietly, his spy agency was delivering a shadow blow.
Even as the election commission deliberated over Mr. Yanukovich's victory,
Ukrayinska Pravda, a news Web site, posted transcripts of conversations from
among members of the Yanukovich campaign.
The officials were discussing plans to rig the election, including padding
the vote. One conversation, recorded on election night, was between Yuri
Levenets, a campaign manager, and a man identified as Valery.
Valery: "We have negative results."
Mr. Levenets: "What do you mean?"
Valery: "48.37 for opposition, 47.64 for us."
Valery later added: "We have agreed to a 3 to 3.5 percent difference in our
favor. We are preparing a table. You will have it by fax."
Mr. Yanukovich won by 2.9 percent. In an interview, Mr. Ribachuk said he
gave the transcripts to Pravda after receiving them from the S.B.U., which
had bugged the Yanukovich campaign.
General Smeshko refused to discuss the tapes in detail. "Officially, the
S.B.U. had nothing to do with the surveillance of Yanukovich campaign
officials," he said. "Such taping would be illegal in this country without
permission from the court. I will say nothing more."
But a member of the siloviki, who spoke on condition of anonymity because
the taping was illegal, acknowledged the surveillance but said it was too
delicate for General Smeshko to confirm. "Those who did this, they did not
intend to become heroes," the officer said. "They wanted only to prevent a
falsified election."
Not long after Pravda posted the transcript, General Smeshko left the
meeting with Mr. Kuchma and headed to a S.B.U. safe house in Kiev for a
secret liaison with Mr. Yushchenko, the opposition leader.
The meeting had self-evident ironies. Mr. Yushchenko, nearly incapacitated
after being poisoned by dioxin in the summer, a crime that remains unsolved,
had publicly linked the poisoning to a meeting with General Smeshko and
another S.B.U. general.
Now he wanted another talk. The group met in a tiny room, behind a drawn
yellow curtain, and ate fruit. Present were General Sarnatskyi, General
Smeshko and General Romanchenko, as well as Mr. Yushchenko, Mr. Ribachuk and
another Yushchenko ally.
Two agreements were struck, both sides say.
Mr. Yushchenko requested more security for his campaign. General Smeshko
agreed to provide him eight specialists from the elite Alpha
counterterrorism unit - a highly unusual step - and to arrange former S.B.U.
members to guard the campaign.
Then the group also agreed that the S.B.U. must publicly show that it was on
the side of the law, not a candidate - an implicit message the agency was
unwilling to abuse power for the premier.
As the meeting ended, Mr. Yushchenko, who is an amateur artist, gave General
Smeshko one of his landscape paintings. The spy chief and the opposition
leader embraced.
Back at the S.B.U. headquarters, General Smeshko and the siloviki decided
that to send a signal to the public they would send officers to read a
statement to the protesters. Mr. Yushchenko appeared the next night, Nov.
25, with five members of S.B.U.
Their statement was indirectly but clearly pro-opposition. It said concerns
about the election were valid, and addressed the Supreme Court, which had
just announced that it would review complaints of electoral fraud. The
officers urged the judges to work objectively.
Then they addressed police officers and soldiers. "Do not forget that you
are called to serve the people," their statement said. "The S.B.U. considers
its main assignment is to protect the people, no matter the source of the
threat. Be with us!"
It was a rare moment for officers used to anonymity and reflected how deeply
opposition sentiments had reached into Ukrainian society. In interviews, two
officers from the stage, Lt. Gen. Oleksander Skibinetsky, a reservist, and
Lt. Gen. Oleksander Skipalsky, who is retired, were asked if their families
influenced their decisions.
"Both of our wives were in the square," General Skibinetsky said.
General Skipalsky said: "My wife. And my daughter, too."
The signal seemed to have had its desired effect. The next morning, cadets
from the Interior Ministry's academy joined the opposition, marching to the
barricades to try to persuade the officers on duty to join them. A few
carried flowers.
The Battle for Kuchma
The state was leaking power. The next day, Nov. 27, Mr. Kuchma summoned
General Smeshko to a meeting at Koncha Zaspa, a government sanitarium
outside Kiev.
In a conference room were Mr. Yanukovich and politicians from eastern
regions supporting him, with the leader of the Interior Ministry, or M.V.D.,
Mykola Bilokon, one of Mr. Kuchma's loyalists, who made no secret of his
support for the premier.
Mr. Yanukovich confronted Mr. Kuchma, asking if he was betraying them, four
people in the meeting said. Then came demands: schedule an inauguration,
declare a state of emergency, unblock government buildings.
Mr. Kuchma icily addressed his former protégé. "You have become very brave,
Viktor Feyodovich, to speak to me in this manner," he said, according to Mr.
Bilokon and General Smeshko. "It would be best for you to show this bravery
on Independence Square."
General Smeshko intervened to offer the S.B.U.'s assessment of the
situation, warning the premier that few of Ukraine's troops, if ordered,
would fight the people. He also said that even if soldiers followed an
order, a crackdown would not succeed because demonstrators would resist.
Then he challenged Mr. Yanukovich.
"Viktor Feyodovich, if you are ready for a state of emergency, you can give
this order," he said. "Here is Bilokon," he continued. "The head of the
M.V.D. You will be giving him, as chairman of the government, a written
order to unblock the buildings? You will do this?"
Mr. Yanukovich was silent. General Smeshko waited. "You have answered," he
continued, according to people in the meeting. "You will not do it. Let us
not speak nonsense. There is no sense in using force."
Mr. Kuchma left the room to take a phone call, then returned with a state
television crew. Mr. Yanukovich slammed down his pen and left.
The government's position was set: there would be no martial law. It was
formalized the next day, on Nov. 28, when the National Security and Defense
Council voted to solve the crisis through peaceful means.
"This was the key decision," Mr. Kuchma later said. "I realized what it
meant to de-block government building by force in these conditions. It could
not be done without bloodshed."
Fighting a Crackdown
Although there seemed to be a consensus at the council, a crackdown remained
possible, either as a response to opposition provocation, or by secret,
unexpressed agenda.
Emotions had been rising and falling in Kiev, and within hours of the
council meeting, they surged again when Ms. Tymoshenko, a Yushchenko ally,
warned demonstrators that there would be an effort to unblock the government
buildings. She urged more people to defend them.
General Popkov, the commander of interior troops, said he was notified of
Ms. Tymoshenko's words and the crowd's restlessness, and ordered the alarm.
The mobilization began.
Precisely what followed, and why, remains unclear, as does who gave the
order, and by what means. General Popkov insists that he alone was engaged
in a calculated bluff, and thus made certain his signal would be instantly
seen.
Holding up his mobile phone, he said, "I deliberately gave the order on this
phone, which is bugged."
Whether General Popkov's phone was bugged is not publicly known. But General
Romanchenko said his agents in the interior units watched the preparations;
simultaneously, S.B.U officers said, their agents in the Interior Ministry's
communications center heard radio traffic about preparations to march.
Bedlam, and battles of nerves, ensued.
Reports of the alarm were relayed to the S.B.U. command, which notified the
opposition, its officers on Independence Square, and then the American
Embassy.
The opposition called the American ambassador John E. Herbst, who called
Viktor Pinchuk, Mr. Kuchma's son-in-law, to find out what was happening, Mr.
Pinchuk said.
Mr. Pinchuk said he called Viktor Medvedchuk, chief of Mr. Kuchma's
administration, who called the interior minister at home. Mr. Bilokon said
he did not know what was happening. "I was really worried," Mr. Bilokon
said, in an interview. "How, without my knowledge, was this order given?"
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell soon telephoned Mr. Kuchma, who did not
take the call.
Outside, the S.B.U. was mobilizing. Several hundred intelligence officers
were already among the protesters, S.B.U officials say. Some were pretending
to be demonstrators themselves. Concealed surveillance teams were
videotaping the crowd. Snipers peered down from roofs. Counterterrorism
teams huddled in nearby apartments and unmarked trucks. Groups in vehicles
roamed the roads to Kiev, trying to determine the direction of the troops'
advance.
Among the protesters' tents, an S.B.U. colonel who had spent the week as a
liaison to the demonstration organizers alerted the organizers that troops
were on their way.
His next mission was to meet the troops as they drew near, he said, to warn
their officers that a crackdown without written orders was illegal. He said
he also planned to warn them that the S.B.U. had surveillance units watching
Kiev, and all actions would be videotaped for use as evidence later.
The fear, he said, was intense. Some intelligence officers thought of
China's crushing of the pro-democracy protesters in 1989 in Beijing. Others
thought of the Romanian revolution in 1989, when, after troops fired on
demonstrators, the people fought back, eventually capturing and killing
President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife.
"We could not believe it could occur to somebody to draw the first drop of
blood, which would have been the detonator of a big explosion," said the
colonel, a deputy chief of Ukraine's counterterrorism forces, who by
Ukrainian law is forbidden to have his name published. "It could unleash a
civil war in our country. Absolutely, sincerely, we were prepared to do
everything in our power to stop it."
While all sides pressed for information and advantage, a group of the
siloviki and Ms. Tymoshenko met at the headquarters of the military
intelligence service, the G.U.R.
Among them were Mr. Galaka, the G.U.R. chief, General Drizhchany, Colonel
Kondratyuk and General Romanchenko, who said he called the S.B.U.
headquarters for instructions. "Chairman Smeshko told me to call General
Popkov, and find out why the alert had been called," he said.
An extraordinary exchange followed. The counterintelligence chief called the
troop commander, whom he had known for years, and asked what were the
grounds for the alert. "He said it was his decision," General Romanchenko
said. "I said to General Popkov that he had to have a written order to raise
troops on full alert, and since he did not have this order he would have to
call back the troops."
Simultaneously, from his office at S.B.U. headquarters, General Smeshko
called Mr. Bilokon, who sought assurances the opposition would not seize
buildings, both men said. General Smeshko called him back and gave that
assurance, shifting responsibility to himself if buildings were overrun.
Other officers said that after about an hour, Col. Gen. Oleksander Petruk,
the army chief of staff, arrived at the military intelligence service's
office. The intelligence officer pressed him for help. He said the army
would not deploy inside Ukraine. "He said it would not be done," Colonel
Kondratyuk said. General Petruk's staff did not return phone messages
seeking an interview.
Ms. Tymoshenko said she watched with amazement as the siloviki and then
General Petruk made calls and warned the Interior Ministry "that they are on
the side of the people, and will defend the people, and that the M.V.D. will
have to deal not only with unarmed people and youth if it comes to Kiev, but
with the army" and the special forces inside the intelligence agencies.
Eventually, General Popkov folded. "He said he was carrying out orders and
he was not a key figure," Ms. Tymoshenko said. First the trucks stopped on
the shoulder of the road. Then the alarm was called off.
General Drizhchany, and others, said that because so many calls were made
that night by and to so many people, it was impossible to tell which calls
were decisive. More likely, he said, was that the calls had a cumulative
effect.
While different accounts of the mobilization agree on many points, they
clash on critical questions. Who ordered the alarm? Who called the troops
back?
General Popkov said both decisions were solely his. This is the official
version, which the siloviki, the opposition and the Western diplomat dismiss
as absurd. "What he did was not a drill," said Mr. Galaka.
Only three people, they say, had authority to give such an order: Mr.
Kuchma, Mr. Yanukovich and Mr. Medvedchuk. Mr. Kuchma denies a role. Mr.
Yanukovich and Mr. Medvedchuk did not reply to requests for interviews.
Ms. Tymoshenko said she witnessed a turning point. Once the siloviki
thwarted the alarm, the administration learned that it did not have sole
influence over the last guarantor of power: the men with the guns.
After a peaceful uprising in Georgia in 2003 deposed President Eduard
Shevardnadze, in part with help from the authorities, she said she was
envious of a country with officers willing to resist corrupt power.
"I had always thought that all of our generals were very loyal to Kuchma and
were pragmatic," she said. "All of a sudden I made this discovery. We had
generals on the side of the people."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/17/international/europe/17ukraine.html
Trident
press. The myth of American CIA playing a critical role in the orange
revolution needs to be exposed as complete fabrication. It was a
revolution IN UKRAINE, CARRIED OUT BY UKRAINIANS.
Slava Herojam! Slava Ykpaini!
Trident
Avstraliiskii inteligent
"Trident" <wyn...@idirect.com> wrote in message
news:8b72a662.05011...@posting.google.com...
I doubt it. Even if Ukrainian agents were used, I am sure the thrust was
from the CIA.
vello
government in coutry of Ukrainian size is impossible.
cherni...@hotmail.com
praising Bandera!
BM
Biwah wrote:
> The New York Times
> January 17, 2005
> How Top Spies in Ukraine Changed the Nation's Path
> By C. J. CHIVERS
>
>
Trident
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"I am sure" ......
Conspiracy theorist.
Trident
Avstraliiskii inteligent
"vello" <vell...@hot.ee> wrote in message
news:1105992585.5...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Well, you can support some movements in some country but to DO the
> government in coutry of Ukrainian size is impossible.
>
"Impossible"? Is this what you mind tells you it is?
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