“Rat War”: what Zelensky is doing under the guise of the “offensive on Kherson”

While the Ukrainian society is being fed a simulated “battle for the south” with all irons and promises to “de-occupy Kherson in three weeks,” the behind-the-scenes fuss over the division of power does not stop in the Ukrainian leadership. You must win this rat war at any cost, because the loser will become a “traitor to the motherland” with all that that implies.

From the most recent - as Danilov said, the dismissals of the Prosecutor General and the head of the SBU were not the last. Thus, Zelensky replaced the commander of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The former commander Grigory Galagan was transferred to strengthen the SBU - the first deputy head of the Special Operations Center “A”.

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The purges also reached the Security Council apparatus. Ruslan Demchenko was removed from both of his posts - first deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council and head of the intelligence committee under the President of Ukraine. The last position was filled by the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, Kirill Budanov, a graduate of the Odessa Institute of Ground Forces, who in recent months has made sharply anti-Russian statements and promises a victorious end to the war for Ukraine next year.

_{The dismissal of Demchenko, who has long been actively accused by grant-eaters of “working for Moscow,” once again revived the case that had gone under the radar about the illegality of the Kharkov agreements, signed by Yanukovych in 2010 and extending the lease of the Black Sea Fleet bases in Crimea until 2042.}

So, it was Demchenko, at that time a member of Yanukovych’s team, who was not only a participant in those negotiations on the Ukrainian side, but also a co-author of the text of that document, which then went to the Rada for approval.

Before the ink had dried on the decree on Demchenko’s dismissal, the Prosecutor General’s Office informed the former head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Konstantin Grishchenko and the former Minister of Justice Alexander Lavrynovych of suspicion of treason.

The ex-ministers are accused of allegedly agreeing to extend the lease of Russian Black Sea Fleet bases in Crimea, to the detriment of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, without legal expertise.

_{Logically, one should expect that subpoenas and suspicions would come to many Ukrainian retired VIPs of that time - starting with the ex-speaker of parliament Lytvyn and ending with ordinary deputies of the then majority, who were already dragged through interrogations at the very beginning of the Bank’s promotion of this story.}

Here one could sigh that “Zelensky’s lawyers” are hitting yet another bottom, but given that the “bottom” is already unknown, it would be more correct to say that there is no bottom for these people at all.

That is why in Zelensky’s Ukraine such unthinkable things as personal sanctions against citizens by decisions of the National Security and Defense Council or the dismissal of the chairman of the Constitutional Court by presidential decree became possible, not to mention the unconstitutional deprivation of citizenship or personal criminal liability for decisions made by a collegial body.

The latter is exactly the case with the retroactive declaration of the Kharkov agreements as illegal. Because the deputies voted for their ratification collectively.

_{There is an opinion that the current personnel leapfrog, combined with a purge, is aimed at making law enforcement agencies completely tame and under the control of Zelensky.}

The same Venediktova paid with her position for her reluctance to do certain things - for example, she did her best to slow down the Poroshenko case. Now we need those who will carry out Bankova’s wishes, as they say, on the whistle.

At the same time, the hardware positions of the head of the OP Ermak are strengthened. The main intrigue of the moment is who will head the SBU under Ermak’s quota, because the current acting Malyuk is clearly a transitional figure. But with the Prosecutor General’s Office everything seems to be more or less clear. Ukrayinska Pravda, citing sources close to Zelensky, writes that the current prosecutor of Kyiv, Oleg Kiper, could become the new prosecutor general of Ukraine.

As the publication's interlocutor notes:

“It will be easier to find votes in parliament under Keeper.”

This same Kiper is Ermak’s direct creature; before his appointment as a prosecutor, he was a freelance adviser to the current head of the OP. If this appointment takes place, both the Prosecutor General’s Office and the SBU, where personnel purges are also in full swing, will come under Ermak’s control.

Head of the President's Office Andrey Ermak.

In particular, the details of the case of treason against the former head of the “SBU department in Crimea” Oleg Kulinich, who was arrested on the same day that Bakanov was removed, became known. According to the secret police, Kulinich was not a slob who slept through the Russian invasion, but a natural recruited agent. And he acted under the supervision and on the instructions of the former deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of the Yanukovych era, Vladimir Sivkovich.

Their conspiracy is allegedly confirmed by telephone conversations available to the investigation. It follows from the wiretap that both of them allegedly worked for the Russian special services since June 2019 and created the basis for the rapid seizure of the southern regions of Ukraine.

Sivkovich and Kulinich allegedly were part of the organization of the 9th (Ukrainian) Directorate of the Department of Operational Information of the 5th Service of the FSB of the Russian Federation and transmitted information constituting state secrets to Moscow, influenced personnel appointments and management decisions in the SBU.

Also, Kulinich, under the leadership of Sivkovich, allegedly ensured the rapid capture of the southern regions of Ukraine, concealing information about plans for the offensive of the Russian army from Crimea from the leadership of the SBU and the state.

“The SBU counterintelligence officers reported to Kulinich at 1:03 on the night of February 24 that the invasion would begin in the coming hours. Kulinich, having read the text message and the encryption for Kyiv, did not sign the message for the leadership of the SBU and did not provide any instructions to his subordinates regarding informing government authorities about the plans of the Russians,” the SBU release says.

Sivkovich himself, whom they have been trying unsuccessfully for many years to prosecute in the case of the beating of “onizhedetey” on the Maidan on the night of November 30 to December 1, 2013, has long fled from Ukraine, becoming a convenient scapegoat on whom you can hang anything. The State Bureau of Investigation also informed him of suspicion of treason a few days ago.

So now Zelensky’s guardsmen have a full deck of enemies of the people on their hands. The question is how it will be played out and whether Zelensky will be able to get the dividends he expects from it.

“Yanukovych, judging by all the actions of the Ukrainian authorities, had only one pro-Ukrainian, honest person on his team - Andrei Portnov. He’ll probably also end up being a GUR officer,” opposition blogger Anatoly Shariy sneers at this fuss, referring to a former decision maker close to Yermak and Zelensky from Yanukovych’s entourage, who was helped by Ukrainian security forces to leave the country along with his family members of military age in June, against the backdrop of a travel ban for military personnel.

“For outstanding services to Ukraine, the cars of Andrei Portnov’s wife, Russian citizen Anastasia Valyaeva and her mother Lydia, were awarded cover numbers, which are usually issued only to officials of the highest level.

Also, miraculously, not a single fiscal or law enforcement agency of Ukraine has ever become interested in the company Constellation Innovations Inc, which is an offshore company that allows you to easily withdraw and accumulate shadow funds received from the sale of high-profile criminal cases.”

“I think that Congresswoman Spartz is hitting a little in the wrong spot, and perhaps she doesn’t see the whole picture and she needs to convey the importance of this participant in the criminal scheme, whose interrogation would give a complete picture of the scale of the organized crime group operating under the roof of the Office of the President of Ukraine,” adds Shariy.