Some knew him as a wise, brilliant Buddhist teacher, others as a legendary Ukrainian patriot ready to die for his fellow countrymen.
If the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) is to be believed, 50-year-old Oleh Muzhchyl — killed by SBU counter-terrorism agents in a raid on Dec. 9 — was actually a mole working for Russian intelligence who had managed to fool everyone for almost two decades.
The SBU said Muzhchyl was a terrorism suspect planning attacks in Kyiv and other cities. It said Muzhchyl shot one officer dead and wounded another before he was shot and killed in Kyiv’s Obolon neighborhood.
Muzhchyl used the name Serhiy Amirov on Facebook and went by the nickname Lesnik (ranger). The Donetsk native had spent years in the ultranationalist group “Tryzub,” a co-founder of the Right Sector nationalist group. Throughout Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine, Muzhchyl led a reconnaissance unit in Donetsk Oblast for Right Sector and gained notoriety for his ruthless anti-Russian sentiment.
But after the dramatic shootout on Dec. 9, some are wondering if it was all an act.
A debate has erupted between those who take the SBU at its word and believe Muzhchyl was working for Russian intelligence, and those who believe there is more to the story – that he was no Russian terrorist, but a Ukrainian one, and it was simply more convenient for authorities to say they had killed a Russian saboteur plotting against them than to say they’d been forced to kill one of their own.
Fighting Russians
For those who knew Muzhchyl and fought alongside him, the version of events offered by the SBU is hard to believe: This “Russian saboteur” had a known track record of fighting against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, of calling on fellow fighters to take the war to Russian territory and fight back, and of criticizing current authorities in Kyiv for being too “pro-Russian.”
Maria, a friend of Muzhchyl’s since the early 2000s, is one of those who doubts the SBU’s story. She requested anonymity out of fear that her comments could get her in trouble at the university where she works.
“He could have been anything – just not a Russian saboteur,” Maria told the Kyiv Post. “I’m absolutely certain of it. Of everyone I know who knew him, nobody believes that he was working for Russia.”
Infiltrating Right Sector?
The official narrative on Muchzhyl begs the question: could Russian security services really be so good as to have infiltrated Right Sector and convinced hundreds of Ukrainian fighters that Muzhchyl was the real deal?
SBU spokeswoman Olena Hitlyanska thinks so.
On her Facebook page, she compared Muzhchyl and the other Russian suspects in the group to pro-Russian attackers who had earlier been arrested after bringing explosives to Kyiv to carry out bombings.
Investigators suspect Muzhchyl and his crew of acting as puppets for the Russian security services in much the same way, with the main evidence against him being the fact that he had “repeatedly traveled out of the country using fake passports,” including a trip to Russia last fall, she said.
Two named Lesnik?
After an outcry from many Ukrainian activists who accused the SBU of having killed a Ukrainian patriot, Hitlyanska said the outrage was misplaced, that there were in fact two men by the nickname Lesnik. One of them is a hero in Ukraine’s east and the other, the one killed in Kyiv, a mole for the Russian security services.
When the real Lesnik first appeared, “the Russian security services decided not to waste time and to make an information clone with the aim of discrediting (the real Lesnik) …. It seems to me, the Russians created the second Lesnik,” she wrote.
Those who knew Muzhchyl were not so quick to buy into Hitlyanska’s version of events. Nor was Mykola Malomuzh, who headed Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service in 2005-2010.
Radical nationalist
Malomuzh said it was unlikely that Muzhchyl was a Russian agent, and that the SBU had not yet provided any evidence that he was. SBU spokeswoman Hitlyanska was not immediately available for a response.
“There is no special service in Russia that would have allowed him to conduct operations against Russia” that would have killed Russians, Malomuzh said, in reference to Muzhchyl’s appeals to fellow fighters to carry out attacks in Russia’s Rostov Oblast.
Muzhchyl was known in Ukraine’s security services since the 1990s, long before the EuroMaidan Revolution.
“We have known him for years,” Malomuzh said. “He was always a member of radical nationalist groups that were operating on the edge of the law or flat out breaking it. We recognized him as a person with patriotic but extremist views, who was prepared to commit extremist acts and was able to protect his interests using force.”
Declared war on Kyiv
According to Muzhchyl’s acquaintances, he had become increasingly angry at the government in recent months and, in a series of manifestos published online, had called for Ukrainian fighters to declare war against authorities in Kyiv.
“It’s convenient to portray him as a Russian saboteur, not as a radical patriot fighting against his own government,” Malomuzh said.
According to Alexander Valov, a Russian citizen who fought for Ukraine with the Azov Battalion, the three “Russian saboteurs” detained in the SBU operation were volunteers who fought in the east – they just happened to have Russian passports.
The SBU, in its official statement on the incident, failed to mention that the Russian suspects had actually fought on behalf of Ukraine.
Artyom Skoropadksy, the official spokesman for Right Sector, told Ukrainian media on Dec. 11 that Muzhchyl had in fact been a member of Right Sector until Aug. 31, when he publicly declared he was leaving the group. Since then, Skoropadsky said, the group had not had “even the slightest interaction with him, nor did he with us.”
According to Muzhchyl’s friends in Right Sector, he left the group because he felt they were not being radical enough; he believed they should be attacking not only Russian forces in the east, but also government officials in Kyiv who may be under the influence of the Kremlin.
He was also highly critical of Dmytro Yarosh’s leadership of Right Sector, a fact which led to some friction between Muzhchyl and fellow members. In a statement published on Dec. 11, Yarosh said he could not comment on whether or not Muzhchyl was under the control of Russian intelligence — but he did recall several times when Muzhchyl seemed to have sabotaged operations against Russian forces in the east.
After being sent to attack a group of Russian forces along with other members of the group, Yarosh said, Muzhchyl, who was in charge of the group, “disappeared somewhere. The operation wasn’t completed.”
Buddhism school
In addition to being a radical nationalist, Muzhchyl was also the founder of a school of Buddhism in Volnovakha, Donetsk Oblast, and by all accounts, he was a devout Buddhist and devoted teacher.
Alex Kulminsky, one of his former students, said while he could not comment on Muzhchil’s political views as of late, he never had any reason to suspect his teacher of having ties to Russia.
“I know for sure he didn’t have any ties at least with official Russian authorities or services and agents. He always considered them enemies. I learned about his nationalistic position at a time when most modern patriots were still changing their diapers every half an hour,” he said.
As for accusations that Muzhchyl was actually a Russian agent, Kulminsky said that nowadays “everyone who goes against the official position is accused of having bonds (with Russia).”
Avenging death
Judging by statements made by Muzhchyl’s friends after his death, the Ukrainian authorities have their own internal enemies to contend with in addition to Russian saboteurs.
In a statement published on the social media pages of the ultranationalist group UPA, or the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, members of the group warned family members of Alfa – the SBU’s counterterrorism unit – to flee so that they wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire when UPA members avenge Muzhchyl’s death.
Describing Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the current Ukrainian authorities as “the henchmen and spies of Putin,” the group claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Roshen candy shop in Kharkiv on Dec. 9 – and they promised to carry out many more such attacks. Poroshenko is the owner of Roshen, the nation’s largest confectionary.
“Our arsenal is much bigger than what was shown. But it’s not meant for Ukrainians…only for enemies. For (state-owned Russian) Sberbank branches, embassies, all Russian companies and the scum working for Russia in Ukrainian power structures and the SBU and Defense Ministry. They know who they are, let them wait for it,” the statement said.
Despite such threats against the Ukrainian authorities, the SBU has maintained that Muzhchyl was a Russian plant – a claim that the pro-Kremlin and pro-separatist media have delighted in.
Separatist-friendly media analyst Anatoly Shariy, who gained fame for his video analysis and criticism of the new Ukrainian authorities, seemed to rejoice in Muzhchyl’s death in comments published on various separatist media sites.
“The funniest thing,” he said, “is that this piece of crap, once gloating in the death of a Russian fighter, has now died as a Russian spy. That’s symbolic.”
Staff writer Alyona Zhuk contributed to this report.
