Presidential official undermined special operation to capture Russian agents, news reports say

A high-ranking
official in the President’s Office is responsible for leaking to Russia a
Ukrainian special operation to capture the Russian Wagner mercenaries that were
traveling through Belarus in late July, according to anonymous Defense Ministry
and Security Service officials interviewed by the pravda.com.ua and censor.net
news sites. As a result of the alleged leak, it was Belarusian President
Aleksandr Lukashenko who captured the mercenaries, which he claimed was done to
ensure stability ahead of elections, but in fact was to shield them from arrest
by Ukrainian special agents, according to the accounts published on Aug. 18.
Lukashenko returned them to Russia on Aug. 14, ignoring Ukrainian requests for
the extradition of 28 of the agents for their illegal involvement in the war in
Donbas.

The Ukrainian
special operation to arrest the Wagner mercenaries was supposed to have
occurred on July 25 aboard the plane flying from Minsk to Istanbul, the reports
said. Yet they did not board the flight for unconfirmed reasons. The day before
the planned arrests, top intelligence officials – Security Service of Ukraine
(SBU) Deputy Head Ruslan Baranetskiy and Defense Ministry Main Intelligence
Administration Director Vasyl Burba – met with the president and his team to
report on the final stage of the special operation. Office Head Andriy Yermak
voiced his opposition to it, stressing that it would undermine his latest
prisoner exchange being planned with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Kozak.
They agreed to postpone the special operation until July 30, when the same
flight to Istanbul was scheduled. Yet Lukashenko undermined this plan by
detaining the Wagner mercenaries on July 29.

Burba announced that
a leak to Russian intelligence undermined the special operation at an Aug. 3
meeting with mostly the same officials. He called for questioning all those who
knew in advance about the special operation, as well as lie detectors tests for
himself, Yermak, foreign policy adviser Ruslan Demchenko and defense adviser
Roman Mashovets. The president made conducted no reviews or investigations, but
instead dismissed and replaced Burba. Baranetskiy has taken a vacation for an
undetermined period.

The special
operation to capture the Wagner mercenaries had been planned for more than a
year, the news reports said. Among those targeted for arrest are likely to have
been involved in the July 2014 attack on Flight MH-17 that killed 298 civilians
and the June 2014 attack on the Il-76 military transport plane that killed 49
Ukrainian soldiers.

The SBU issued an
Aug. 19 statement denying involvement in any special operation to capture the
Wagner mercenaries. In his turn the same day, Yermak told the lb.ua news site
that it’s not true that he arranged the postponement of the special operation
in order to organize the latest prisoner exchange with Russia. The claim is
also not true that Burba demanded questioning and lie detector tests of all
those familiar with the special operation, he said. “It can be assumed that
some internal forces also decided to use this disinformation campaign against
Ukraine in their own interests ahead of the elections. Or it’s possible someone
really wanted to undermine the ceasefire in Donbas, which has been in place
since July 27, and during which we haven’t lost a single Ukrainian soldier in
fighting,” he said.

Zenon Zawada: If this
Wagner special operation story is true, then the President’s Office is choosing
to boost the president’s poll ratings with prisoner exchanges at the expense of
not only the national interest, but also the international interest in
prosecuting the terrorists who killed the MH-17 passengers and crew. It implies
that the president is more interesting in having loyal officials, rather than
those that show initiative in the war with Russia. It would also imply that
Russian agents are in the president’s inner circle. The claims would also
confirm that Zelensky depends on Yermak for his foreign policy decisions.

If the story is false, that would imply that numerous
defense and intelligence officials are trying to undermine the Zelensky
administration. That’s either in opposition to its policies, or perhaps in
alliance with Petro Poroshenko’s political force ahead of the local elections
scheduled for October. As is often the case, the truth is somewhere in the
middle, as we don’t believe such a story can be invented out of thin air.
Either way, the reckless actions and scandals that have plagued the Zelensky
administration – and that threaten the national interest – are continuing at
the highest levels of government. Amid this political instability however, the
Zelensky administration has managed to maintain a relatively stable situation
with the economy and the coronavirus pandemic.