See also: Voronenkov’s assassin called Russian agent by Ukraine official (GRAPHIC VIDEO)
See also: Assassination of Denis Voronenkov, exiled Russian lawmaker, in Kyiv (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
Exiled ex-Russian member of parliament Ilya Ponomarev called Denys Voronenkov a “pilot case” into whether former Kremlin supporters with vast insider knowledge of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s corrupt ways and his war on Ukraine could help Kyiv authorities.
If so, the “pilot case” ended catastrophically when an assassin fired several gunshots into Voronenkov, who like Ponomarev is also an exiled ex-member of the Russian parliament.
Voronenkov, who became a naturalized Ukrainian citizen and a vocal Kremlin critic after relocating to Kyiv in October, was killed instantly about 11:30 a.m. on March 23 outside the Premier Palace Hotel in Kyiv.
“Ukrainian authorities missed the importance of him as a witness, of protecting him and as a symbol,” Ponomarev said in interview with the Kyiv Post on March 26, the day after he attended the funeral of Voronenkov in Kyiv.
Ukraine’s authorities “never understood who was Denys Voronenkov, why he was here and what was his main value. Voronenkov had a huge understanding of Putin’s regime – how the corruption and money laundering worked, the financial links of top officials,” Ponomarev said. “That was his greatest value.”
Moreover, Ponomarev said, Voronenkov was willing to share what he knew with criminal investigators because he wanted to combat corruption in Russia.
Ponomarev said that he knows of “several guys of the same rank” as Voronenkov who were ready to come to Ukraine and tell what they know. But now he thinks they’ll be too afraid to leave Russia, criticize the Kremlin publicly or provide information to criminal investigators.
Ponomarev said that he also knows other Russians who want to give information against the Kremlin’s crimes but who are waiting until they see that the Putin regime will collapse. In any case, he doubts that many people are willing to take Voronenkov’s risks now.
Any chilling effect of Voronenkov’s assassination would be yet another tragedy for Ukraine, which has been battling Russia’s war for more than three years now at a cost of 10,000 lives and at a loss of Crimea and parts of the eastern industrial Donbas.
Voronenkov’s ‘ No. 1 enemy’
If Ponomarev is right, a longtime enemy of Voronenkov and a personal insult by a close Putin aide triggered the rage and revenge that led to his assassination.
Ukrainian authorities identified the gunman as a Russian agent — 28-year-old Pavel Parshov — who died after being fatally shot by Voronenkov’s bodyguard, who is recovering from gunshot wounds he also suffered in the shootout.
Voronenkov followed a path with similarities to Ponomarev, who splits his time between Washington, D.C., and Kyiv, and advises American investors interested in Ukraine. Both Voronenkov and Ponomarev switched from being part of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s system to Kremlin critics.
Voronenkov was a lawmaker from the pro-Kremlin Communist Party from 2011 to 2016. He supported prohibitions on foreign ownership of Russian media. In 2013-2014, he criticized Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution and voted for Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Voronenkov became a Putin critic and fled to Ukraine only after becoming a suspect in a fraud case, which he believes to be political, and losing re-election to parliament in September — and hence, losing his legal immunity from criminal prosecution.
Meanwhile, Ponomarev used to be a member of the pro-Kremlin Communist Party and Just Russia parties and an expert at the presidential information policy council. He switched to the opposition during mass protests against rigged parliamentary elections in late 2011.
But Ponomarev said he was always in opposition to the late Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Putin “and never did any switches. In 2003, I founded Left Front, the most radical anti-Putin, left-wing movement. The Communist Party and Just Russia both positioned themselves (and still do) as left-wing opposition parties. Basically, they became truly pro-Putin only by 2013, when Kremlin started repressions against political activists in the aftermath of the Bolotnaya protests. Their leaders got scared and started maneuvering. At the time, I immediately cut my ties with them, not to be criticized for unacceptable compromises. I was in 2002-2006 a member of the Communist Party. I resigned because of growing nationalism there and took part in the formation of Just Russia, where I was a member until October 2013).
Ponomarev also supported authoritarian restrictions on the internet in 2012. He was the only Russian lawmaker who voted against Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, although he supported the national independence of the peninsula of 2 million residents.
Ponomarev was banned from Russia that year by court order after becoming a suspect in an embezzlement case at the Skolkovo innovation center. Ponomarev says the case is politically motivated, but Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny and others have accused him of shady dealings at Skolkovo. “So it was an unexpected, unplanned and involuntary move — and an illegal decision, by the way,” he said.
Ponomarev said he was not a close friend of Voronenkov, but shared circumstances as exiled Kremlin critics and former Russian lawmakers brought them together in Ukraine.
Voronenkov and Ponomarev were supposed to meet in Premier Palace the same day that Voronenkov was assassinated. Ponomarev said that Voronenkov was seeking advice on how to sell his properties in Russia, including three apartments and luxury automobiles, and what to do if he got placed on Interpol’s “red notice” of internationally wanted suspects.
Voronenkov was under criminal investigation for fraud in Russia. His fears of criminal prosecution — involving most recently an allegation of illegal seizure of property — prompted his flight to Ukraine. Since he didn’t get re-elected to parliament in the Sept. 17 elections, he would have lost his immunity from prosecution.
Ponomarev called the accusations against Voronenkov “artificial, based on one guy in prison” and part of a vendetta against him by ex-Russian FSB security services general Oleg Feoktistov. “The allegations were so fake that Feoktistov’s request (for an investigation of Voronenkov) was turned down three times by the prosecutor general.”
It is Feoktistov who Ponomarev blames for directly ordering the assassination, calling him Voronenkov’s “No. 1 enemy.”
Feoktistov could not be reached for comment.
Putin knew?
Feoktistov was, however, no ordinary FSB general. He served as deputy head of the internal security department, which gave him the power to investigate anybody in the former KGB agency — the most powerful institution in Russia — and to report directly to Putin, Ponomarev said.
Ponomarev traces the enmity between Feoktistov and Voronenkov to the early 2000s fallout over the “Three Whales” corruption investigation by the Federal Drug Control Service – a giant smuggling scandal that led to the firing of 29 FSB generals. Among them, Ponomarev said, was Feoktistov’s mentor. Voronenkov played a role in the case as an investigator of the Federal Drug Control Service in 2004 to 2007.
Feoktistov was also thought to be responsible for an assassination attempt on Voronenkov in 2007, according to Ponomarev.
Voronenkov told the Gordon.ua site in March that Feoktistov “had ordered” a criminal case against him, and their feud goes back to 2007. This Federal Drug Control Service, where Voronenkov worked, was later disbanded and its head Aleksandr Bulbov was arrested for illegal wiretapping in 2007. Bulbov blamed Feoktistov for fabricating the case against him.
Feoktistov is reportedly close to Igor Sechin, CEO of Rosneft and Putin’s closest ally.
In early March Feoktistov lost his job as head of security at Rosneft and returned to the “military service,” although it is not clear if it means the military or the FSB, Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper reported.
After leaving Rosneft, Feoktistov “needed some action to prove his usefulness” to the Kremlin, Ponomarev surmises.
Eliminating the talkative traitor Voronenkov, a new enemy of the state and an old enemy of Feoktistov, would be one way to do it.
Ponomarev has little doubt Feoktistov organized the assassination of Voronenkov with help from the Russian FSB security services — and that means, he said, Putin knew and approved.
“For me, there is only one question: Did he call Vladimir Putin before the trigger was pulled or after?”
Repeated attempts to locate Feoktistov for comment were unsuccessful.
‘Face of a flea’
In January, Russian Kommersant published news that Voronenkov had started giving testimony in Ukraine’s investigation of deposed President Viktor Yanukovych, who is accused of many crimes, including asking Russia to send troops to invade Ukraine.
In response to that article, Ponomarev said Voronenkov became the target of a Kremlin smear campaign. The breaking point came when Russian President Vladimir Putin’s confidant Vladyslav Surkov dismissed Voronenkov as “some guy with the face of a flea.” The wives of Surkov and Voronenkov were close friends, Ponomarev said.
Voronenkov “was so pissed off. ‘I have the face of a flea? OK, I will show them,'” Ponomarev recalls Ponomarev telling him.
So, from his exile in Ukraine, Voronenkov started stepping up his public criticism of the Kremlin regime, giving interviews with journalists right up to his death.
Ponomorev said that Voronenkov had an “important meeting” that morning, before the one scheduled with him, but he wouldn’t even tell his wife, Maria Maksakova Jr. Ponomorev said he doesn’t know who Voronenkov was supposed to meet with either. But the meeting never happened. It turned out to be a ruse to ensure that Voronenkov was at the corner of Pushinska Street and Shevchenko Boulevard, outside the Premier Palace Hotel, at the appointed time.
‘Almost perfect’ hit
Security camera footage from the Premier Palace Hotel shows the assassin Parshov rushing up on foot from behind on Shevchenko Boulevard to catch up with Voronenkov, who turned around to see the man who was confronting.
The gunman shot him and the bodyguard and then calmly shot Voronenkov two more times before walking away on Pushkinskaya Street.
The killer must have known that the shooting would be caught from at least two angles on security cameras. It happened in broad daylight, in a very public place in front of witnesses in front of a landmark hotel.
All of this was intentional, Ponomarev believes, all the better to make a public warning from the Kremlin about what happens to “traitors,” he said.
The killer wore bright red tennis shoes, gray sweatpants, a grey hoodie and tan gloves. The clothing, and the location, were also all part of an “almost perfect” plan, Ponomarev said.
“I think it was extremely professional,” he said. “Everybody speaks of the shoes. Nobody would remember the face because their attention was turned to the shoes.”
Fleeing the scene on foot by walking against the grain of one-way automobile traffic on Pushkinska Street was another well-planned element, Ponomarev said.
“It’s a permanent traffic jam. If Voronenkov had additional security sitting in a car, they couldn’t chase him by car. And police wouldn’t be able to arrive quickly by car. So he planned to escape on foot on Pushkinskaya Street,” Ponomarev said. “There are a lot of pathways out of Pushkinsaya.”
The killer’s only miscalcuation in an otherwise “almost perfect” hit was thinking that he had killed Voronenkov’s bodyguard also. He came close. His bullet had come within centimeters of the bodyguard’s heart, Ponomarev said, but the man — a big guard provided by the state but not identified by name — recovered quickly enough to summon the strength to fire gunshots that mortally wounded Parshov, who died a few hours later in a hospital.
“This was his only mistake,” Ponomarev said. “If the murderer escaped, you would have no trace at all.”
Ukraine’s ‘main witness’
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko reverted to familiar rhetoric in denouncing Voronenkov’s murder, calling it “a matter of honor for the law enforcement bodies of Ukraine to solve (the March 23) murder, when the former deputy of the Russian State Duma and the main witness in the case of Yanukovych was killed near Premier Palace Hotel,” according to the presidential website.
Ukrainian authorities use the phrase “matter of honor” frequently when talking about high-profile crimes that they almost always never solve. The other overused rhetorical flourish, so far unused in Voronenkov’s case, is when top law enforcement officials vow to take a criminal case under their “personal control.”
Ponomarev was surprised by Poroshenko’s characterization of Voronenkov as “the main witness” in the Yanukovych case. He said that, as far as he know, that is not the case. He said Voronenkov only gave corroborating testimony of Yanukovych’s letter after he fled to Russia on Feb. 22, 2014, asking Putin to send Russian troops to Ukraine.
“I don’t think he was a key witness. The fact he was testifying in the Yanukovych case was just an accident,” Ponomarev said. “We were talking on other issues with (military prosecutor) Anatoly Matios. I introduced to him Denys. Matios said ‘Ilya already testified on this, maybe you would also say something, so that we could get two statements.'”
In any case, Ponomarev said, his knowledge was more extensive than Voronenkov’s about the Kremlin’s involvement in the EuroMaidan Revolution that toppled Yanukovych and Russian plans to invade Crimea in 2014.
Voronenkov’s untapped value to Ukraine is that “he had a lot of knowledge about smuggling” in Ukraine, Ponomarev said. “He new the business interests of high generals in FSB. Corruption, money laundering and smuggling — he was on the (Duma) committee on security and corruption. That was his focus.”
Voronenkov was also in a position to know “how the trade flows are organized, who is supervising them, which banks are involved,” he said. “The Ukrainian security people didn’t understand.”
‘Another Litvinenko’
Ponomarev said Putin’s logic is simple: Kremlin traitors must be killed.
Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian FSB security service agent who wrote about the crimes and corruption of Putin’s Russia, was killed in a gruesome polonium poisoning case in London, where he was living in exile, in 2006. Many other Kremlin insiders-turned-critics have been killed or died suspiciously. In that sense, he said, Ponomarev is just “another Litvinenko.”
For Russians to “switch sides and be successful…that was totally unacceptable for Putin’s system,” Ponomarev said. “In the Litvinenko case, his presumed murderers are members of parliament, decorated with awards, highly reputable and wealthy.”
He said that Putin “will provide political cover for those who organized the murder, no matter what. If murderer would become known, it looks like it doesn’t matter for them.”
Ponomarev and Voronenkov had discussed the merits of him moving to America, Europe or Ukraine. He settled on Ukraine, partly because he had limited command in English, but mainly because he wanted to be “a professional investigator and punish the corrupt bastards.”
His wife is a famous singer, one of the top ones in Russia who also counted Putin among her fans. She is also a former Russian State Duma member who, Ponomarev said, will continue her career in Ukraine.
Given Voronenkov’s history as a pro-Kremlin lawmaker from 2011 to 2016, Ponomarev warned him there will be “a certain degree of distrust from the very beginning.”
He also warned Voronenkov that Ukraine can be unstable and dangerous and he was “buying a ticket to war,” to which Voronenkov replied: “I want to buy a ticket to war.”
Ponomarev said that the public shouldn’t judge Voronenekov too harshly for his pro-Putin stance.
Russian top officials and elected members of parliament “try to narrow their focus. They tell themselves ‘our responsibility is this and that. If Putin decides to go to war, we are part of the system. It’s not our decision. It’s not our war.’ Denys Voronenkov was a perfect specimen of this. He was just playing by the rules.”
It’s better to judge Voronenkov for his decision to finally buck the Kremlin system and try to help Ukraine in what turned out to be the final six months of his life.
“He has done, with his death, so good for Ukraine,” Ponomarev said. “He died in this war. He paid with his blood for his new country and also for Russia by trying to remove the regime which is dangerous, traitorous and totally corrupt.”
‘Total paranoid’
Ponomarev agrees with the approach of exiled Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison for crossing Putin. Khodorkovsky is trying to get Putin to retire with promises of guarantees of immunity. “Please, Mr. President, retire. We will buy you an island in the Pacific and supply you with the best women that money can buy.”
Putin, he said, has made himself a hostage of his own system — a “ship slave,” as Putin himself said. “He’s right. That’s how he thinks. He has nowhere to go. He doesn’t trust the West. He’s always trying to break any potential alliances. He’s afraid of everyone and he’s in a total paranoid mood.”
At least, however, Russia has better chances to recover after Putin than Ukraine now, he said.
In Russia, the corruption is centralized in contrast to Ukraine where “nobody is in charge and there’s totally a stalemate” in Russia’s war in the eastern Donbas.
“Corruption in Ukraine is not systematic at all. It’s at all levels here. The president cannot rule the court, but money can rule the court.”
In some respects, he said, Ukraine’s corruption is worse than that in Russia, at least because a sense of nationalism is higher in Russia.
“In Russia, we have our mother, but we have Mother Russia as well,” he said. “Ukrainians don’t have Mother Ukraine. They have their own mothers and their own house. That’s why politicians make their sacrifices for their personal benefit, not for the nation.
“They are not behaving as Russian elites either,” he said. “They want this country for themselves to rob. They don’t want Russians to rob it. They don’t want Europeans to rob it. They don’t want Americans to rob it. They want to pillage it for themselves.”
Even with its Western friends, such as America, Ukraine’s elite led by Poroshenko are making the wrong moves.
“Ukrainian elite don’t know how to play it right. They need to change their position (and) show usefulness of this establishment to the Americans. Right now, they (in the Trump administration) just don’t see the value of Ukraine.”
Kyiv Post staff writers Oleg Sukhov and Oksana Grytsenko contributed to this story.
