SBU arrests Russian agent for organizing tariff maidans

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) announced on
Jan. 23 its agents arrested a resident of the Kherson region who allegedly
worked for the Federal Security Service in Russia in organizing protests
against rising utility prices, or the so-called “tariff maidans.” Eduard
Kovalenko, who was recruited in May 2020 through the Russian-sponsored Luhansk
People’s Republic, received a payment in exchange for organizing a series of
protests “whose goal was discrediting the state bodies and destabilizing the
situation in the country.” SBU agents documented how Kovalenko fulfilled FSB
orders in collecting information on trends in crisis events in Ukraine, “which
was supposed to form a stable protest potential in a region bordering
temporarily occupied Crimea and spread throughout the country,” said the SBU website.

The SBU has begun pretrial investigations for the
criminal cases of violating Ukraine’s territorial integrity against Kovolenko,
who visited Russian-occupied Simferopol in February 2020, met with Ñrimean
prime minister Sergei Aksyonov, and received orders to gather signatures for a
petition in Kherson to renew water supplies to Crimea, promote separatist
attitudes and make popular ideas of autonomy for certain regions. In 2017,
Kovalenko was sentenced to five years in prison for actions undermining army
recruiting in the region. At the end of 2019, the Ukrainian government
exchanged him to Donbas for war prisoners. He returned to Ukraine and within
months traveled to Crimea to meet with its leadership.

Zenon Zawada: There are
several aspects to this story that are worth noting. Firstly, critics of
President Zelensky warned about the consequences of his prisoner exchanges,
particularly in releasing security threats. Kovalenko was precisely such a
person, even returning to Ukraine to continue his subversive activities. And he
traveled to Crimea to meet with its leadership freely, without arrest
afterwards. These events reflect the carelessness of Zelensky’s policies to
such security threats as Kovalenko (or using him to discredit political
enemies, as discussed in the next paragraph).

This report is also evidence that the Russian
intelligence services are infiltrating otherwise genuine protest movements,
namely the Save FOP (individual entrepreneurs) and tariff maidans. Such infiltration
poses the risk of discrediting these protest movements, to the advantage of the
Zelensky administration, which doesn’t much appreciate them. To undermine them,
the Zelensky administration could even allow Russian agents like Kovalenko to
further infiltrate them (which could explain why he was allowed to engage in
subversive activities for so long).

This report also indicates that Russia is still
active in trying to undermine Ukrainian statehood from within, including
promoting further separatism and autonomy. Russia is also trying to boost
public sentiment to support renewing water supply to Crimea. These attempts are
futile, in our view. Russia’s best chance of retaking control of Ukraine is by
discrediting Zelensky, whose celebrity luster is slowly deteriorating, and
engineering his removal. But Russia will continue to operate on all fronts in
its hybrid war on Ukrainian statehood.