You're reading: SBU under fire for using KGB-style tactics

Public and politicians alike say they feel like they are living in a Soviet police state again.

One of the most reputable Ukrainian weeklies recently ran a joke: “In 2003 [then-Ukrainian President] Leonid Kuchma published his book named ‘Ukraine is not Russia.’ In 2010, he is going to publish another one: ‘I Was Mistaken [about that]’.’’

After President Viktor Yanukovych and his team came to power on Feb. 25, the country radically changed its course eastward. The president started copying the governing style of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. A crackdown on political opposition began under the cloak of an anti-corruption campaign. In Russia, media were tamed and politically disobedient oligarchs brought to heel.

All of it is reminiscent of the Soviet Union, the political entity that Putin and so many others admired, where the fearsome KGB was one of the main enforcers of the authoritarian system.

“You can’t help but notice that the atmosphere in Ukraine is getting rotten. It resembles Soviet times.”

– Stepan Kurpil, lawmaker.

Now, in Russia, the successor agency to the KGB is the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB. And it, too, under Putin’s patronage has Soviet-like powers.

In Ukraine, the equivalent law enforcement agency is the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU.

During Viktor Yushchenko’s five-year presidency ending on Feb. 24, the SBU behaved a lot less like an oppressive law enforcement agency. Under the leadership of Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, a Yushchenko appointee, the agency became more open to the public and declassified a lot of previously secret historical documents.

Is all that changing now for the worse?

Some think so.

“You can’t help but notice that the atmosphere in Ukraine is getting rotten. It resembles Soviet times,” said lawmaker Stepan Kurpil, a parliamentarian with the opposition Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko. “I feel like we are living again in the Soviet Union.”

International groups

With one of Ukraine’s top oligarchs, Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, in charge of the SBU, the agency is reverting to heavy-handed practices, drawing public outrage. Khoroshkovsky, seen as the Yanukovych administration’s top enforcer, would not be interviewed for this story.

But one of Khoroshkovsky’s close associates, presidential chief of staff Sergiy Lyovochkin, blamed the criticism of Khoroshkovky and the SBU on political critics waging an unfounded campaign of discreditation.

Nevertheless, SBU actions speak for themselves.

Several days ago Viktoria Siumar, executive director of Mass Information Institute, a media think tank, said that SBU employees asked her concierge about her routine under the pretext of investigating a shady company registered at her address.

“It’s complete nonsense,” Siumar said. “We’ve been living here since the condo was built and there was no company here.”

“I know there are a lot of NGOs in many European countries that are funded by the U.S. Department of State so they basically promote interests of their donors in their home countries.”

– Inna Bohoslovska, Party of Regions’ lawmaker.

Siumar was also surprised by Party of Regions’ lawmaker Inna Bohoslovska’s reaction to her case at a TV political talk show. The lawmaker asked her about the sources of funding and, according to Siumar, didn’t see any problem in checking grantees of international organizations.

Bohoslovska said that Ukrainian non-governmental organizations should be scrutinized. “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” Bohoslovska said.

“I know there are a lot of NGOs in many European countries that are funded by the U.S. Department of State so they basically promote interests of their donors in their home countries,” Bohoslovska said. “Thus the donor can directly influence the activities of its grantee,” Bohoslovska explained. “I would say: he who pays the money shapes the policy.”

Maryna Ostapenko, SBU spokesperson denied that the agency was digging for nformation on Siumar.

Earlier Mykola Kniazhytsky, director of TVi channel, complained he had been shadowed by SBU operatives.

SBU agents have also been in conflict with international organizations and foundations accredited in Ukraine. Three months ago, Nico Lange – director of the democracy-promoting Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Ukraine — was denied entry into the nation for several hours. There has not been a public explanation.

Shortly after, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned international organizations to stay out of direct involvement in politics.

On Sept. 6, however, the International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) posted a statement saying that the SBU contacted its grantee organizations and asked them to provide information about foundation-funded projects, including the financial information and evaluation of their impact on the upcoming local Oct. 31 elections.

Yevhen Bystrytsky, IRF executive director, said the foundation does not endorse any political forces in Ukraine. Instead, Bystrytsky said, the foundation is focused on charity projects for people with physical disabilities, low-income families, orphans and pensioners. “Nothing like this has happened before,” Bystrytksy said.

Bystrytsky believes the SBU encounters with the International Renaissance Foundation and Lange are linked.

“Those are very unwise actions done by officials, including those from SBU,” Bystrytksy said.

Siumar said that the SBU is mistaken if it thinks it can intimidate civil society and political opponents. “It really looks like they didn’t properly analyze what caused the Orange Revolution,” said Siumar, referring to the popular uprising that overturned a rigged presidential election in 2004, leading to Viktor Yanukovych’s triumph over Viktor Yanukovych for president on Dec. 26, 2004. “The Orange Revolution was not fueled by international foundations and grants. It was fueled by intimidation, pressure, censorship, corruption and the absence of independent justice.”

Ostapenko said the agency is authorized to check Ukrainian non-governmental organizations who get international funding if it has suspicions that this money will be used for political activities in Ukraine.

“SBU doesn’t exceed its powers,” Ostapenko said. “So far nobody could give us any facts proving this accusation.”


Historians, academia

“They asked me if I had any documents marked with secret/top secret, which is completely ridiculous, as the documents I was working with were all declassified”.

– Ruslan Zabily, an historian and director of Lviv Lontsky Prison Memorial.

On Sept. 8, six SBU agents detained Ruslan Zabily, an historian and director of Lviv Lontsky Prison Memorial, and interrogated him for more than 14 hours without letting him call a lawyer.

The SBU officers confiscated his laptop and external hard drives, where he kept electronic copies of declassified documents and his research files. They tried to persuade him to stop his research and think about teaching at school instead, as it “would be better for his family.”

Zabily says the agents were acting on verbal orders from Khoroshkovsky and were looking for documents that could have been used for Zabily’s research on strategy and tactics of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, known by the UPA acronym, the guerrilla fighters who battled Soviets to achieve Ukrainian national independence during World War II.

“They asked me if I had any documents marked with secret/top secret, which is completely ridiculous, as the documents I was working with were all declassified,” Zabily said. But now, Zabily and others believe, documents shedding light on Soviet atrocities in Ukraine will become classified as secret again – part of a new Kremlin-friendly historical revisionism.

“Revealing the truth about the Holodomor (the 1932-1933 Josef Stalin-ordered famine that killed millions of Ukraines) and UPA impedes spreading Russia’s influence on Ukraine,” Zabily explained. “Russia wants to implant its own national myths here in Ukraine, so the Ukrainian ones have got to go.”

On Sept. 9, Zabily learned that a criminal case has been launched against him. The researcher is also accused of publishing a state secret.

SBU spokesperson Maryna Ostapenko confirmed that Zabily was suspected of disseminating state secrets and collecting information in an unlawful manner. SBU officials are also trying to trace Zabily’s contacts with Ukrainian and foreign historians whose research focused on the history of Ukraine under the Communist regime.

The SBU appears to be trying to infiltrate the academic community once again, like its Soviet KGB predecessor. In May, agents tried to recruit Borys Hudziak, rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. Gudziak refused to cooperate.

Zabily also thinks that SBU’s visits to Hudziak and organizations funded by the International Renaissance Foundation are linked. “Those can’t be just coincidences,” Zabily said.

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