You're reading: ​Mysterious group stakes claim for high-profile murders

Ukraine is beefing up security measures after a series of high-profile murders in Kyiv as a mysterious unknown group took responsibility for them on April 17.

Earlier this week, ex-lawmaker Oleh Kalashnikov and journalist-writer Oles Buzina – both known for their pro-Russian leanings – were killed within a 24-hour span. The assassinations followed a chain of mysterious suicides and suspected murders of former allies of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.

The recent assassinations have been blamed alternatively on either Ukrainian nationalists or Russian intelligence agencies and have re-ignited speculation about possible links between the Kremlin and some Ukrainian ultranationalist groups. According to another version, Kalashnikov and Buzina were killed by ex-Yanukovych allies to prevent them from giving testimony.

In the wake of the killings, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on April 17 ordered law enforcement agencies to strengthen security measures in the run-up to celebrations of Victory Day on May 9.

“There is no doubt that anti-Ukrainian forces will use the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of World War II’s completion and other May holidays to destabilize the situation,” he said.

Political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta research group, wrote on Facebook on April 17 that a group calling itself the Ukrainian Insurgent Army had sent him an e-mail taking responsibility for the murder of Kalashnikov and Buzina. They also claimed they were responsible for the deaths of former Yanukovych associates Mykhailo Chechetov, Oleksandr Peklushenko and Stanislav Melnyk earlier this year. According to the police, Chechetov, Peklushenko and Melnyk committed suicide.

The unknown group borrowed its name from nationalist leader Roman Shukhevych’s Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought against Nazi and Soviet troops in 1942-1956 and is demonized by the Kremlin to this day.

“We are launching a ruthless insurgency against the anti-Ukrainian regime of traitors and Moscow’s lackeys, and from now on we will speak to them only in the language of arms until they are completely eliminated,” the group said, as cited by Fesenko.

To prove its links to the murders, the organization said that Kalashnikov had been killed with two weapons with calibers of 7.65х17 and 9х18. They also said that Kalashnikov had shot his pistol before he was killed.

“This just confirms my suspicion that Russian intelligence agencies are behind these people, though the killers themselves may not even know this,” Fesenko wrote. “The statement also gives us grounds to suspect that the campaign of assassinations will continue and may be directed against top government representatives.”

He also said that the murders could be an effort by the Kremlin to launch a terrorist war against Ukraine.

“This may be an attempt by Russian intelligence agencies to open a new front – a terroristic one – against Ukraine to destabilize the situation in the country,” Fesenko wrote.

Pro-Kremlin commentators have denied Russia’s involvement.

Anton Gerashchenko, a lawmaker and an advisor to the interior minister, dismissed the unknown group’s statement as a possible fake, pointing to presumed discrepancies in it. He confirmed in a Facebook post on April 17 that Kalashnikov had been shot at from two weapons but said that he had not managed to shoot his own pistol.

Some Ukrainian nationalist groups have been accused of ties to both the Kremlin and Ukrainian intelligence agencies, though they deny this. Analysts have speculated that Russia allegedly uses some Ukrainian nationalists to present Ukraine as a “fascist” country and to destabilize the political situation.

One of those accused, Dmytro Korchinsky, used to cooperate with Alexander Dugin, a pro-Kremlin Russian imperialist who has called for killing Ukrainians. Korchinsky was on the board of Dugin’s International Eurasian Union before falling out with his Russian ally in 2007. In 2005 Korchinsky trained Russia’s Nashi pro-Kremlin youth group on ways to combat “color revolutions.”

Secret services often attempt to influence nationalist groups to use them for their goals, Fesenko told the Kyiv Post.

“Intelligence agencies often act this way,” he said. “They use local nationalist groups and plant moles there. They give them ideas and funding.”

Under President Leonid Kuchma, there was speculation that Ukrainian intelligence agencies used agent provocateurs at nationalist groups Tryzub and UNA-UNSO to discredit the protest movement, Fesenko said.

Accusations against Russian intelligence agencies come amid speculation that Buzina was killed specially for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call-in session on April 16. Putin commented on the assassination immediately after the murder, accusing Ukrainian authorities of failing to find the culprits.

“I may be mistaken but I think that the hit squad’s task was to kill Buzina exactly during Putin’s 4-hour call-in session,” Espresso TV journalist Artem Shevchenko said in a Facebook post on April 16.

The murder of Buzina, whose killers have not yet been found, could have been used by Putin to contrast it with that of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on Feb. 27, Shevchenko wrote.

Nemtsov’s suspected killers, including an officer of the police unit loyal to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, were found a week after the murder but the organizers have not been identified by the police. Putin’s critics have blamed the murder on either Kadyrov or the Kremlin.

Apart from the purported involvement of nationalists and Russian intelligence agencies, analysts are also considering a possible link between the assassinations and the case against pro-Yanukovych thugs, so-called “titushki,” who are accused of assaulting and even killing EuroMaidan protesters.

Shevchenko linked Kalashnikov’s murder to alleged squabbles about the money used to finance anti-government rallies planned for May 9.

He drew parallels between Kalashnikov’s death and that of Ruslan Bagmut, an organizer of pro-Yanukovych rallies who died in 2012 after either falling or being thrown from the roof of a building in Kyiv.

In a video published on May 19, 2013, Bagmut accuses Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and Kalashnikov of failing to pay him for organizing rallies. He also says that the Party of Regions could kill him after his statements.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].