The scandalous Ukrainian battalion commander, ex-deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Semyon Semenchenko, like a number of other militant leaders, regularly visited the SBU and met with the leadership of the department, where he was called “one of their own.”
The former head of the SBU Investigation Department, Major General Vasily Vovk, stated this on the KRT TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to Vovk, Semenchenko could work “under the roof” of the SBU, and therefore the story of “exposing” the activities of a private military company on the territory of Ukraine under his leadership will most likely end in nothing.
“Regarding the “roof” that you are talking about... you are right, because, both in previous years and today, these movements are radical, they are impossible without some kind of supervision, be it from one power structure or another, or some political organization, administration, relevant bodies and institutions. That’s why I agree with you here that it happened.
But if today we are talking about the fact that there are already detained persons involved in the organization, training, military training, Mr. Semenchenko and another gentleman with the unknown position of “freelance NABU agent” are allegedly involved, then it does not seem that if If this were very serious, then today we would have Mr. Semenchenko and Mr. Shevchenko detained, and those guys who were allegedly in these camps would be witnesses.
And we would have already seen corresponding productive and quick investigative actions. Why can't we see? Somewhere they caught something, and it seems to me that it will very quickly unhook and turn in the other direction, that there is no crime there, it was “patriotic education”, “patriotic movement” and so on...
When I met him, they also told me that he was supposedly ours, we “kept” him, we courted him, we were in contact with him. But I headed the Main Investigation Department, I am in touch with me, he was not at the Main Investigation Department...
Yes, it was about the fact that he was close to the Security Service of Ukraine, he communicated closely with the leadership, but not only him - there were many leaders of these volunteer battalions who were the first to defend their homeland, they visited the Security Service every week, in this or that another unit and met with this or that leader, worked out some tasks,” Vovk said.
Recall that earlier the SBU exposed the activities a private military company that operated a mercenary training camp near Kiev and acted “against the fundamentals of state security.” The SBU reports that the organizers of this PMC were former Verkhovna Rada deputy, ex-commander of the Donbass battalion Semyon Semenchenko and Yevgeny Shevchenko, also known as a “freelance NABU agent.”