Ukraine Defector: CIA Behind Secret Plots to Kidnap, Torture and Assassinate Ukrainian Dissidents for President Zelensky

[Source: ainhoaristizabal.wordpress.com]Jeremy KuzmarovCovert Action Magazine

Techniques of Torture and Assassination Deployed by the SBU (Ukraine’s CIA) Recall the U.S.’s Brutal “Operation Phoenix” in Vietnam

Vasily Prozorov, a former officer with the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) stated soon after his defection to Russia in 2018 that the SBU had been advised by the CIA since 2014.

“CIA employees [who have been present in Kyiv since 2014] are residing in clandestine apartments and suburban houses,” he said. “However, they frequently come to the SBU’s central office for holding, for example, specific meetings or plotting secret operations.”

Prozorov’s revelations take on extremely ominous implications in light of a new report by The Grayzone Project detailing the SBU’s participation in a campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture overseen by Ukrainian President and Western media darling Volodymyr Zelensky.

The campaign bears comparison with Operation Phoenix in South Vietnam, which resulted in the killing, imprisonment and torture of thousands of South Vietnamese, including civilian officials accused of being loyal to the left-wing, anti-imperialist National Liberation Front (NLF).

In the Ukrainian case, one of the targets of the SBU death squads was the mayor of the eastern city of Kreminna in the Ukrainian-controlled side of Luhansk, Volodymyr Struk.

On March 1, Struk was kidnapped by men in military uniform and then shot in the heart, with his tortured body displayed before the public. Struk had reportedly urged his Ukrainian colleagues to compromise and negotiate with pro-Russian officials.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, celebrated the mayor’s murder, declaring on his Telegram page: “There is one less traitor in Ukraine.”

Gerashchenko has compiled a “blacklist of enemies of the state.” It includes journalists who have been murdered by state-backed death squads, such as prominent columnist Oles Buzina, whose name had appeared on the list.[2]

As of today, eleven mayors in Ukrainian towns are missing. On March 7, the mayor of Gostomel, Yuri Prylypko, was found murdered. Prylypko had reportedly entered into negotiations with the Russian military to organize a humanitarian corridor for the evacuation of his city’s residents—a red line for Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who had long been in conflict with the mayor’s office. (The Ukrainians claim that Prylopko was killed by Russian soldiers while distributing food and medicine)

Then there was the murder of Denis Kireev, a top member of the Ukrainian negotiating team, who was killed in broad daylight in Kyiv after the first round of talks with Russia. Kireev was subsequently accused in local Ukrainian media of “treason.”

President Zelensky stated that “there would be consequences for collaborators,” indicating his support for the Phoenix-style operations.

Police State

Currently, Zelensky is promoting a bill that would expand the SBU’s powers.

[…]

On April 12, Zelensky announced the arrest of his principal political rival, Viktor Medvedchuk, by the SBU. In a photo released to the public, Medvedchuk’s face appeared to be swollen and bruised, the likely result of beatings by SBU goons.

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‘Rampage Against Any and All Iterations of Internal Political Opposition”

The Grayzone Project reported that, since Russian troops entered Ukraine on February 24, “Ukraine’s SBU security service had been on a rampage against any and all iterations of internal political opposition,” which indeed sounds a lot like Phioenix. “Leftist Ukrainian activists have faced particularly harsh treatment, including kidnapping and torture.”

On March 3 in the city of Dnipro, SBU officers accompanied by Azov ultra-nationalists raided the homes of activists with the Livizja (Left) organization, which has organized against social spending cuts and right-wing media propaganda.

While one activist said the Azov member “cut my hair off with a knife,” the state security agents proceeded to torture her husband, Alexander Matjuschenko, pressing a gun barrel to his head and forcing him to repeatedly belt out the nationalist salute, “Slava Ukraini!”

“Then they put bags over our heads, tied our hands with tape and took us to the SBU building in a car. There they continued to interrogate us and threatened to cut off our ears,” Matjuschenko’s wife told the German publication Junge Welt.

The Azov members and SBU agents recorded the torture session and published images of Matjuschenko’s bloodied face online.

[…]

In the following days, the SBU arrested broadcast journalist Yan Taksyur and charged him with treason; human rights activist Elena Berezhnaya; Elena Viacheslavovna, a human rights advocate whose father, Mikhail, was burned to death during the May 2, 2014 ultra-nationalist mob attack on anti-Maidan protesters outside the Odessa House of Trade Unions; independent journalist Yuri Tkachev, who was charged with treason; disabled rights activist Oleg Novikov, who was jailed for three years this April on the grounds that he supported “separatism”; and an untold number of others.

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Fascist Lineage

According to the World Socialist website, the SBU—a successor of the Stalinist secret service KGB in Ukraine—has long-standing ties to the Ukrainian far right, including the neo-fascist Azov Battalion.

It has been heavily involved in efforts by the Ukrainian state to rehabilitate the Nazi collaborationist organizations, the Ukrainian Insurgency Army (UPA), and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which was headed during World War II by fascist Stepan Bandera.

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the first head of the SBU after the Euromaidan regime-change operation of 2013-2014, declared in 2015 that the SBU “does not need to invent anything new, it is important to build on the traditions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and UPA in the 1930–1950 years.”

During World War II, Ukrainian fascists of the OUN-B were involved in the massacres of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles, as well as of Ukrainian opponents of fascism. After the war and well into the 1950s, both the OUN-B and UPA were engaged in an insurgency against Soviet rule, with backing from the CIA, during which the UPA killed another 20,000 Ukrainian civilians.

Phoenix Always Rising from the Ashes

According to Valentine, the disaster now unfolding in Ukraine has long been in the works. Starting in 1991 with the fall of the USSR, the CIA began buying property and setting up organizations and businesses in Ukraine so it would have fronts and safe houses.

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Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/04/25/cia-behind-secret-plots-to-kidnap-torture-and-assassinate-ukrainian-dissidents-for-president-zelensky-says-ukraine-defector/