Ukrainian forces allegedly foiled plan by Chechen paramilitaries to kill president

March 3, 2022 by 1 Comment

Russia UkraineA PLOT BY A notorious Chechen paramilitary group to assassinate the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, was foiled by Ukrainian forces, according to a Ukrainian government official. The claim was made on Tuesday by Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications, a government-linked enterprise that works closely with the country’s Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The source of the allegation is Oleksiy Danilov, chair of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council—which is believed to be closely linked with the Center for Strategic Communications. Danilov said on Tuesday that members of the Kadyrovtsy (known in English as Kadyrovites), a Chechen paramilitary regiment, had been dispatched to Ukraine in order to “eliminate” Zelensky.

The Kadyrovites are rooted in the Chechen separatist movement of the 1990s, when Chechen militants fought against the Russian military. But a sizeable group of Chechen fighters entered the conflict on behalf of the Russian state when their leader, Akhmad Kadyrov, took Moscow’s side during the Second Chechen War. Today they operate as a personal protection squadron for Kadyrov’s son, Ramzan Kadyrov, who rules Chechnya on behalf of the Kremlin. Occasionally the Kadyrovites have been participated in foreign missions on behalf of Moscow, notably in Syria in 2017 and 2018.

Danilov said the assassins had attempted to approach Kiev from the northwest, separated in two groups. One of the groups was allegedly “destroyed” in the town of Hostomel, which borders the northwest suburbs of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Another group had come “under fire” in Kiev, Danilov claimed. It is worth noting that, according to Danilov, Ukrainian forces “received information” about the alleged assassination plot by agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service —Russia’s counterintelligence and counterterrorism agency— who “do not want to take part in this bloody war”.

Earlier this week, British newspaper The Times reported that 400 Russian paramilitaries belonging to the Wagner Group were heading to Kiev in order to assassinate Zelensky. Wagner, a secretive security firm believed to operate on behalf of Russian military intelligence, first appeared in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Since then, the company has operated around the world as a private paramilitary entity. Its mission is allegedly to afford the Kremlin “plausible deniability” capabilities for operations in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 03 March 2022 | Permalink

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Ukrainian leader Zelensky says Russian assassins are in Kiev with orders to kill him

February 25, 2022 by Leave a comment

Volodymyr ZelenskyTHE PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE, Volodymyr Zelensky, warned on Thursday that teams or Russian assassins have already entered the nation’s capital, Kiev, with orders to kill him and his family. Zelensky made this statement during a late-night address to the nation from an undisclosed location, presumably in Kiev. Referring to “enemy sabotage groups”, he said they had already “entered Kiev” and were seeking to “destroy Ukraine politically by destroying [its] head of state”.

Zelensky referred to “information we have”, according to which he had been “marked by the enemy as the number one target” and his family as “the number two target”. The statement was an apparent reference to an alleged “kill/capture list” that Moscow plans to put to use in Ukraine. As intelNews explained last week, United States officials have said that the purpose of the alleged list is two-fold: first, to minimize popular resistance by Ukrainians to an invading Russian army; and, second, to destabilize the government in Kiev, so that a pro-Russian government can eventually replace it.

According to the United States government, the list contains the names of senior Ukrainian politicians, Ukraine-based critics of the Russian and Belarusian governments, as well as journalists and other activists. According to Washington, the alleged list is maintained by the foreign intelligence arm of the Russia’s Federal Security Service—known as the Service for Operational Information and International Communications—or the Fifth Service, in short. The Fifth Service is political action of a covert nature, which is aimed at electoral subversion, political influence campaigns, psychological operations, and the undermining of groups or movements that Russia perceives as adversarial.

On Thursday, Foreign Policy’s national security and intelligence reporter Amy MacKinnon told SpyTalk’s Jeff Stein and Jeanne Meserve that the existence “kill/capture” list seemed credible, when one considers the Kremlin’s long history of assassination operations. MacKinnon was the first reporter to write about the alleged list. She told SpyTalk that it was part of a “campaign of arrests and assassinations”, which Moscow aimed to carry out on Ukrainian soil. She added that, although the names of potential victims have not been revealed, the list is “quite detailed and relatively extensive”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 25 February 2022 | Permalink

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White House whistleblower is a CIA officer, report claims

September 27, 2019 by 6 Comments

Donald TrumpThe individual who filed a report claiming that United States President Donald Trump sought help from a foreign country to win the 2020 election is believed to be a male employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. The man, who is legally classified as a whistleblower, filed the report on August 12. It was released for publication on Thursday and is now available [.pdf] online. It claims that Trump tried to “solicit interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 US presidential election. The basis of this claim refers to a telephone exchange between the US president and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, which took place on July 25.

The whistleblower’s report states that Trump asked Zelensky to investigate the business dealings of Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine. The implication of the whistleblower’s allegation is that Trump sought to subvert the election effort of one of his main rivals for the US presidency. The whistleblower report, along with transcripts and memoranda that describe the July 25 telephone conversation between the two heads of state, form the basis of an impeachment inquiry that has been launched by Trump’s political rivals in Congress.

On Thursday, The New York Times cited what it said were three people who knew the identity of the whistleblower. The paper said that the whistleblower is a male employee of the CIA. In the past, the man had been assigned to work in the White House, said The Times. The secondment of CIA personnel to the White House is a regular occurrence. CIA personnel are temporarily assigned to perform duties relating to National Security Council meetings, or manage the White House Situation Room. They also monitor and help manage the White House secure communications system. The paper said that the CIA officer’s White House secondment had ended and that he had returned to the CIA headquarters by the time the July 25 telephone call between Trump and Zelensky took place. In his report [.pdf], the whistleblower states that he was “not a direct witness to most of the events described”. However, he cites accounts of these events by “multiple officials” who shared the information with him “in the course of official interagency business”.

Some have criticized The Times for leaking information about the whistleblower’s place of employment and past assignments. They argue that the information could allow the White House to identify the source of the complaint. By law, whistleblowers in the US have the right to remain anonymous, and thus be protected from possible retaliation from those whom they accuse of abusing their power. But the paper claims that the American public has a right to information about the whistleblower’s “place in government”, so as to assess his credibility and evaluate the significance of his allegations.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 27 September 2019 | Permalink

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