Pres Zelensky Gov.Takes Aim At Secret Agencies Spying on Ukrainians
Aim At Secret Age lies Soying on Ukraininans Not Russians |
| The fight against corruption helped propel President Volodymyr Zelensky to power in 2019.Credit...Tetiana Dzhafarova/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Ukraine has three main intelligence agencies: the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the Foreign Intelligence Service (FISU), and the Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) of the Ministry of Defence. Additionally, there are reports of a network of 12 secret CIA bases in Ukraine, supporting intelligence operations.
As we read this reporting from Ukraine lets keep in mind Ukraine is in a war for its own existence. On. the other hand the United States is not at war except for itself and we can see what the government is doing with the rule of law and corruption.
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
The New York Times
Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine in 2019, partly on a promise to root out systemic corruption.
But now critics say his government is trying to undermine some of Ukraine’s most important anti-corruption organizations as they pursue investigations into his administration.
One of Ukraine’s most prominent anti-corruption advocates and a frequent critic of the Zelensky administration, Vitalii Shabunin, was accused in a court proceeding last week of evading military service and fraud. He has denied the accusation, which his many domestic and international defenders say lacks merit. If convicted, he could face a decade in prison.
On Monday, even as the country came under yet another large-scale bombardment in its grueling war with Russia, Ukrainian security agencies directed dozens of raids on Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Special Anticorruption Prosecutor, saying that Russian intelligence had infiltrated the organizations.
And on Tuesday, the Ukrainian Parliament, which Mr. Zelensky’s party controls, passed a measure that gives Ukraine’s prosecutor general, who was appointed by Mr. Zelensky, new powers over investigations by the two agencies. Late Tuesday night, the Parliament’s website stated that Mr. Zelensky had signed the bill into law.
On Tuesday evening, thousands of people took to the streets outside the president’s offices in Kyiv, the capital, to protest the moves — the largest antigovernment protests in years.
Activists and analysts say these developments are part of a broader crackdown on independent media, government oversight agencies and other voices critical of Mr. Zelensky’s administration. And they warn that the efforts threaten to dismantle years of hard-won democratic reforms.
“This prosecution of Mr. Shabunin is the opening salvo,” declared Josh Rudolph, who leads the German Marshall Fund’s corruption team, characterizing it as a “brazen campaign to undermine the entire ecosystem constructed to root out corruption.”
The Zelensky government did not respond to written questions but has broadly dismissed criticism that it has tried to silence dissent.
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| A man in a green T-shirt, standing, speaks and gestures in a small courtroom. |
Vitalii Shabunin, left, during a court session in Kyiv, Ukraine, last week where he was accused of evading military service and fraud. He denies the charges.Credit...Vitalii Nosach/Global Images Ukraine, via Getty Images
The director of the anti-corruption bureau, Semen Kryvonos, and the head of the special prosecutor’s office, Oleksandr Klymenko, criticized the legislation giving the prosecutor general new powers over the agencies shortly after Parliament passed it.
Speaking at a news conference in Kyiv, Mr. Kryvonos said that the imperative “to fight high-level corruption” was “destroyed by representatives in Parliament.” He added, “The president of Ukraine still has to sign this law, and we ask that he does not sign it.”
On Tuesday night, there were calls for mass protests if Mr. Zelensky signed the measure. If they took place, they would be the first mass demonstrations aimed at the government since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
In the raids on the two agencies, the Ukrainian authorities detained one employee working with the anti-corruption bureau, saying he was working against state interests. The bureau said in a statement that it had worked closely with Ukrainian security services about concerns related to the employee for years but had never been provided with any evidence against him.
Meanwhile, the bureau has been investigating possible abuses by people in the Zelensky administration, including Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov, who was charged with corruption on June 23.
The Group of 7, which represents the world’s wealthiest democracies, issued a statement on Monday night expressing “serious concerns” about the Ukrainian government’s investigation into the bureau and said it would “discuss these developments with government leaders.”
The two agencies were created more than a decade ago specifically to provide an independent check on government abuse, bypassing traditional law enforcement, which was seen as riddled with corruption. They were formed with the assistance of the F.B.I., supported by the European Union and nurtured by successive American administrations.
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| A man in a green shirt gestures with his right hand as he speaks to a group of men in suits and ties standing behind him. |
Oleksiy Chernyshov, now Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, in 2022. He was charged with corruption last month.Credit...Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters
But the agencies drew criticism from President Trump’s supporters in his first administration for what they saw as Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 presidential election to favor Hillary Clinton. The agency had investigated off-the-books payments in Ukraine to Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman in the 2016 race, Paul Manafort, leading to Mr. Manafort’s resignation.
As for the prosecution of Mr. Shabunin, 59 nongovernmental organizations signed an open letter to Mr. Zelensky late last week, saying it “bears signs of political motivation, abuse of rights” and either “gross incompetence” or “a deliberate attack to pressure” Mr. Shabunin.
“Ukraine’s allies have been saying for three years that the country is bravely fighting for the free world — where democracies obey the rule of law and do not target activists for persecution,” said Mr. Rudolph of the German Marshall Fund. “If they remain silent in this precarious moment, their words of support for Ukrainian freedom will prove shamefully hollow.”
But Europe has largely chosen silence over censure, prioritizing unity in the fight against Russia.
Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Kyiv-based Anti-Corruption Action Center, a nongovernmental group of which Mr. Shabunin was a co-founder, said the Zelensky administration had taken this silence as a “green light” to target critics.
Dismissing the charges against Mr. Shabunin as absurd, Ms. Kaleniuk said, “This is the moment when Zelensky and his administration has very clearly crossed the red line, a line that is unacceptable to Ukrainian society.”
Leading Ukrainian media outlets also published scathing editorials criticizing Mr. Shabunin’s prosecution.
Mr. Shabunin, 40, has been at the forefront of efforts against corruption in Ukraine for more than a decade. He is a co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a nongovernmental organization, and as a critic of the Zelensky administration has come out against proposed legislation that would block investigating corruption in the defense sector.
He also was vocal in criticizing the government earlier in the war, during a scandal involving accusations that the government paid highly inflated prices for food for its troops. Despite being presented with evidence weeks before it became public, the Zelensky administration defended then-Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov rather than address the problems. Mr. Reznikov remained in office for seven months after the scandal broke.
“There is a war — we need unity, we need the right image presented to the outside world,” Mr. Shabunin said in a recent interview. But, he added, it is important for the country to grapple with governmental corruption.
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| President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, with Oleksii Reznikov and others. |
Mr. Zelensky and Oleksii Reznikov, third from left, in 2023. As defense minister, Mr. Reznikov stayed in office for months after a scandal over prices for food for troops.Credit...Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mr. Shabunin is accused of avoiding military duty while receiving $1,200 a month in army pay and illegally using a military vehicle. However, Mr. Shabunin volunteered for service on the first day of the Russian invasion in 2022 and was then seconded to work at the anti-corruption bureau.
The authorities do not dispute that his assignment was legitimate, but they say he did not perform his duties at the agency. Investigators said in a statement that the prosecution “is in no way related to his professional activities.”
Mr. Shabunin said that at the legal proceeding, the court refused to hear evidence from his boss at the time that showed the prosecutors’ claim to be false. The next step in his prosecution comes next month, when his case will go before a judge again.
Mr. Zelensky’s critics in Ukraine acknowledge a concern the government has raised — that Moscow is working hard to fuel corruption narratives as part of its efforts to undermine Western support. Ukraine relies heavily on weapons and financial support from its allies, and it is seeking billions of dollars more each year to expand production by its own arms industry.
Mr. Shabunin himself noted this tension.
“Whatever it will be with me, we as Ukraine should get weapons from the West,” he said. “We can, as a society, deal with any kind of Ukrainian politician.”
Mr. Rudolph said the campaign against independent agencies and activists “is doing Putin’s work for him.”
“I doubt that is the intent, but it makes it all the more ironic to use Russian influence as the pretext,” he said.
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