You're reading: Russia has many ways to wreak havoc in Ukraine

While Russian-backed proxies openly wage war in eastern Ukraine, there are many other fields where Russia implicitly persists to destabilize the situation in order to preserve its influence over Ukraine.

Experts say Kremlin agents are embedded in Ukraine’s security services, the police, army, and parliament. An ongoing Russian trade and information war against Ukraine, as well as the constant threat of terrorist attacks, might contribute to more turmoil in the country.

Apart from that, professional incompetence on the part of certain officials in government and law enforcement bodies stand in the way of marshaling effective resistance to Russia’s aggression, according to analysts.

More destabilization from Russia expected

Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to maintain Russia’s grasp over the entire post-Soviet territory.  And Moscow sees Ukraine’s recent democratic breakthrough following the EuroMaidan Revolution and possible integration with the European Union as a threat to Putin’s hold on power, analysts believe.  “All Russian international integration projects like the Russian World or Slavic Unity have no meaning without Ukraine,” says Oleksiy Melnyk, security analyst at the Kyiv-based Razumkov center think tank. “I am afraid that Putin will raise his bets again to keep Ukraine under his control. We can expect even Russia’s direct invasion into Ukraine.”

Mykola Malomuzh, a retired army general and former foreign intelligence chief in 2005-2010, says that according to his information, Russia-backed terrorists plan to shell Russian territory from Ukraine so that Putin could have an excuse to send so-called “peacekeeping troops” into Ukraine. Malomuzh warns that there is a high probability that Russia’s war against Ukraine could spark World War III.

Russian spies, supporters in Ukraine

After former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s hasty retreat at the end of February to Russia, the heads of law enforcement agencies were dismissed, yet the middle management of the Ukrainian Security Service, known by its SBU acronym, and law enforcement structures still hold their positions. Some of them are still working for Russia, Malomuzh believes.

He believes dozens of Russian agents in the SBU work in Kyiv and a few operate in the regions. “A scant 0.001 percent of Russian agents among the 45,000 on the SBU staff are enough to betray the state’s interests,” adds the former foreign intelligence chief.

The large number of police officers in Donbas that quickly started cooperating with the separatists make the whole security situation even worse. “Donetsk and Luhansk police are sabotaging commands from the center,” former Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Viktoriya Siumar said on April 29.

Military expert Dmytro Tymchuk, who heads the Kyiv-based Center for Military and Political Studies, considers local police units to be a weak link in combating Russian-backed guerillas, estimating that 70 percent of the Donetsk police support the rebels. “A Ukrainian police officer gets $300 a month while a Russian police employee receives $1,200. That’s why the traitors (among Ukrainian police) want to become part of Russia,” Tymchuk wrote on his facebook page on April 14. 

Lawmakers from Ukraine’s Communist Party, Party of Regions and the For Peace and Stability factions which many say represent the pro-Kremlin lobby in Ukraine’s parliament are not expected to challenge Russian aggression. “Those lawmakers might block the tribune, block the adoption of European integration laws and they will obviously prevent any law that is disadvantageous to the Kremlin (from being adopted),” political analyst Oleksiy Haran says adding that pro-Russian lawmakers spread Moscow’s propaganda in mass media, which promotes separatism.

Atmosphere of fear

Recently called-in bomb threats in large Ukrainian cities are believed to be aimed at intimidating Ukrainians and spreading fear among them. “During the last two months the Kyiv police received 61 anonymous reports about mining of the different types of objects. In the Ukrainian capital the number of such anonymous reports increased in May but in July it reached its peak with 47 calls,” the Interior Ministry told the Kyiv Post. The law enforcement body added that reports about fake bomb threats in shopping malls, metro and train stations have become more frequent. Some of the calls are from the east of the country, where the anti-terrorist operation is conducted.

“Obviously, some are trying to spread panic in the capital, to disorganize the work of law enforcement bodies, to scatter forces,” the press-service of the Kyiv prosecutor Serhiy Yuldashev said on July 21.  Deputy Head of the SBU press service, Lada Safonova, told the Kyiv Post that since the beginning of the year the spy agency identified 67 people involved in these activities all over Ukraine. According to the Interior Ministry press service, the Kyiv policehave identified and arrested seven suspects for these offenses. They could be jailed for up to eight years in prison if found guilty.

Analysts believe these so far fake threats of terrorist attacks may turn real. The attacks are the continuation of Moscow’s policy of destabilizing Ukraine. “Shelling residential houses by army units from Russian territory, arranging terrorist attacks on the territory of Ukraine are elements of systematic terror aimed to intimidate the Ukrainian population,” says Malomuzh.

Maidan turns into source of instability

Acts of terror are not the only things that Russia can use to bring Ukraine into social and political chaos. The group of the several hundred young people still living in Kyiv’s downtown Maidan Nezalezhnosti can easily create unrest on the streets of Ukraine’s capital. “The Maidan nowadays is the project of the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) and some marginal parties which are trying to undermine the current situation in Ukraine,” Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on July 13 in a televised interview on 1+1 TV channel.

Their numbers would be sufficient to block government buildings and organize protests under the disguise of the people’s will, analysts say. “Russia may finance the Maidan through someone’s hands and people currently living on the square do not even know whose tasks they perform,” says Melnyk of the Razumkov Center.

Incompetence of Ukrainian security services

Fromer spy Malomuzh blames not only international leaders that allowed the armed fighting in the Donbas to take place, but also accuses Ukraine’s current government of incompetence. For three and a half months since April 13 when the anti-terrorist operation in eastern Ukraine started, Ukrainian authorities failed to close the border with Russia. “Our current officials avoid taking responsibility for political security or military issues because of incompetence, which is why we have lost the Crimea and now we suffer losses in the east (of Ukraine),” Malomuzh says.

“Ukraine has 80,000 professional special squad soldiers and officers who know how to annihilate the terrorists and are willing to do that. The third wave of military mobilization, which was announced by the current authorities (in mid-July), means that the boys who did not even serve in the army are doomed to die in the battle with terrorists,” he adds.

Melnyk also blames the SBU for poorly managing the anti-terrorist operation, monitoring of potential separatists and abolishing Russia-backed terrorists, which are the security service’s main tasks. “During the period when Yanukovych ruled the country, the SBU which was ruled by the Russian citizen Oleksandr Yakymenko almost turned into a branch of the FSB,” he says adding that SBU agents were given instructions to cooperate with Russia.

Malomuzh says that if the Ukrainian police will not manage to catch some 6,000 Russians and nearly 10,000 Ukrainian separatists currently operating in the east, they will disperse in different directions and will threaten the lives of peaceful citizens in the whole country. “If they (Russian-backed rebels) get an order from Moscow, they will perform diversions and terrorist attacks in Ukraine,” he said.

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