You're reading: SBU busts huge arms smuggling channel, accuses ex-top spy Yakymenko of running it (VIDEO)

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) is accusing its former chief, Oleksandr Yakymenko, of being behind an arms smuggling plot that it busted on May 25. In the operation, 73 crates of weapons were seized that were shipped by sea from Sevastopol in Russia-occupied Crimea to the Berdyansk district in Zaporizhya Oblast. 

Yakymenko, who is wanted by authorities for mass murder
during the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, couldn’t be reached for comment. He is believed to be among the former Ukrainian officials, including Yanukovych, hiding out in Russia. Yakymenko has given interviews to Russian news media.

Five
RPK-74 machine guns, 88 AK-74 automatic rifles, three PKM machine guns, 24
RPG-22 antitank disposable grenade launchers, 918 RGD grenades, and 20,880
rounds of ammunition were seized, according to a May 26 SBU news
release.

Three Ukrainian
citizens moreover were arrested, including the brother of the self-proclaimed
mayor of Mariupol, Denys Kuzmenko, who has three prison convictions. 

The arms were
designated for “terrorists,” stated the SBU, adding that “(pro-Russian)
separatists were to use the weapons to carry out terrorist acts, including the
takeover of seaports and administrative buildings in Berdyansk and Mykolayiv
during the (May 25) presidential election.” 

Yakymenko, 49, is
now accused also of “aiding terrorist organizations,” the SBU statement said,
which appealed to “international partners for assistance in finding and turning
him over to Ukrainian law enforcement bodies.” 

He has in interviews with Russian journalists denied the charges of mass murder of EuroMaidan demonstrators in January and February before Yanukovych fled office.

Yanukovych appointed him the nation’s top spy on Jan. 9, 2013. He was the first
deputy head of the SBU and headed its corruption and organized crime fighting
department since July 5, 2012. Before that, he headed the Donetsk Oblast SBU
department from Aug. 5, 2011. Soon after his inauguration in 2010, Yanukovych
appointed him the head of the SBU department in Sevastopol on March 18 of that
year. 

According to
Yakymenko’s official biography
when he headed the SBU, he was born in Estonia during the Soviet period. He
graduated from the Yeysk Higher Air Force School in Russia in 1986, according
to Den newspaper, a Ukrainian daily. After graduation, he served in Mongolia
and in Crimea. In 1997 Yakymenko graduated from the Yuri Gagarin Air Force
Academy in Russia, but resigned from the Russian Air Force in 1998. 

His official SBU
biography never stated when and if he received Ukrainian citizenship. According
to an Ukrainska Pravda investigation, Yakymenko in 2007-2008 was an internal
security specialist at the Interregional Industrial Union in Donetsk, which is
99 percent owned by Lemtrans, the largest privately-owned rail freight
transporter in Ukraine which belongs to Rinat Akhmetov. 

Also under
Yanukovych’s presidency, Ukraine’s and Russia’s spy agencies signed a
cooperation agreement on May 19, 2010. The deal effectively diminished
counterintelligence efforts against Russia, military expert and blogger Dmitry
Tymchuk has stated. The same agreement allowed Russia’s KGB-successor agency to
return their agents to its Black Sea fleet bases in Sevastopol and other areas
of Crimea. They had been made to leave in December 2009 by then-President
Viktor Yushchenko because they were actively recruiting Ukrainian citizens,
financing pro-Russian groups and conducting other subversive activities. 

According to
Tymchuk, conducting counterintelligence activities of Russia were moved from
top priority to priority number four in autumn 2010 during Yanukovych’s first
year as president. He added that the Russian counterintelligence department was
severely cut, including the scale of counterintelligence activities in eastern
Ukraine.