Unlike Russia, Ukraine has demonstrated its ability to fire high-level officials. That is, not just cosmetic changes and reshuffles, but important heads are now rolling.
President Volodymyr Zelensky fired deputy head of Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) Oleksandr Yakushev, managers of two departments, and SBU heads in two Ukrainian regions, according to presidential decrees published on March 6.
The dismissed officials are Oleksandr Provotorov, the head of the Economic Support Department, Ihor Nosko, the head of the Department of Protection of State Secrets and Licensing, Borys Bezrukyi, SBU head in Zaporizhzhia Oblast and Eduard Fedorov, SBU head in Sumy Oblast.
Zelensky has already appointed new people for two of these positions.
On Feb. 8, an online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported that SBU had classified the results of an inspection into its former chief Ivan Bakanov.
Bakanov was fired in July 2022 over endemic treason at the security service. After Bakanov's dismissal, the Ukrainian parliament appointed Vasyl Maliuk as the new SBU head.
Maliuk is close to Zelensky's notorious deputy chief of staff Oleh Tatarov, anti-corruption activists say. Tatarov was charged with bribery in 2020. Since then, his case has been destroyed by law enforcers, while Tatarov is believed to wield significant influence over most law enforcement bodies.
Maliuk's appointment came after an anti-corruption crackdown on Feb. 1, when law enforcers raided powerful oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, scandalous former Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, and top tax and customs officials.
The large-scale operation came as the Ukrainian government sought to show that it is tackling corruption as the West provides unprecedented amounts of aid to Kyiv.
Bakanov was part of the Kholomoisky gang associated with the same film and TV studio that Zelensky worked for (and laundered vast quantities of money for). Kvartal-95 has many prestigious alumni now running the Kiev government. Arestovich, who was Zelensky’s good friend once, was also an actor, only not as successful as Zelensky was. Also, for a time, Arestovich held some rather interesting opinions.
The famous quote of his that everyone knows is, of course:
The "Orange Revolution" is an "age of Aquarius" revolution, anti-Christian in essence. It is pointless to oppose hierarchical structures to it. She will dissolve them. Just as our government went over to the side of the revolution seven minutes before the end, so it will be with you. You will simply wake up in another world, and there will be no way back. America secured the total support of everyone - all your neighbors, friends and family, and neither you nor they will understand how this happened.
He even used to hang out with our friend Dugin and his Eurasianists and talk about ways to combat the spiritual crisis that America was perpetrating on the world.
That’s him (second from left) on a panel with Dugin (furthest to the right)
I want the old Arestovich back.
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Lower-level officials in Ukraine suspected of Russian sympathies in Kherson are being arrested all the while. Three new “collaborators” were arrested by the SBU. They face confiscation of property and 10 years in prison.
But are they actually pro-Russian?
Hard to believe that anyone would stay in Kherson when Russia announced the withdrawal. If I had to guess, these people were probably just willing to work with whoever was in power and had some property worth confiscating.
How many getting caught up in the rolling arrests are actually pro-Russians like Skvortsov and how many had shiny things in their possession that attracted the spook magpies to them? This sort of thing was commonplace in Ukraine (and Russia, in some places) even before the war. Now, all they have to do is prove that you had dealings with the “occupiers” to get at your stuff.
Hard to say.
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The real reason for the rolling firings is not regular corruption. It is communication and possibly cooperation with the FSB. Intelligence agencies always engage in tit-for-tat schemes with other agencies. They get to bring their bosses proof of the hard work they have been doing and so do the other spooks. Win, win.
However, there haven’t been many purgings in Russia as compared to Ukraine, unfortunately.
We can argue over what the underlying reason for this is though. It could be because of pressure from the West. It could be because they feel the pressure to make things work more keenly than Russia. It could just be that Russia’s leadership is more entrenched - a result of at least two decades of relative stability leading to networks of patronage and blackmail that cannot be touched at the risk of unravelling the whole tangled support system of the various agencies and even the Kremlin.
Ukraine, in contrast, was a free-for-all until the start of the war, really. A far more fluid situation where assassination, hostile takeovers and shifting alliances, were the order of the day.
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Another point of friction has emerged within the Kiev government.
Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny has raised doubts about whether sending poorly-trained and poorly-equipped raw recruits into the meat-grinder of Bakhmut and Artemovsk generally is a good idea.
Here, I have to agree with Zelensky, who seems poised to fire Zaluzhny, that the current Ukrainian strategy is the correct one. For the price of several tens of thousands of worthless (to him) Ukrainian peasant lives, he gets to chip away at Wagner and the other elite units fighting in Bakhmut on the Russian side. All the while, NATO trains a breakthrough force of at least 20K+ fresh troops armed with Western equipment for the planned assault on the south to cut off Crimea.
My personal conspiracy theory is that Zelensky and his Western handlers want as many dead Wagnerites as possible because these are the best, most motivated, and most pro-Russian fighters that Russia has. Wagner as an organization taken in its entirety is a serious threat to the West and Ukraine in ways that the regular Russian army and the Kremlin are not. Wagner makes outreach efforts to the West, runs black ops in places like Syria and Africa, and is a creation of the actually, demonstrably anti-Western and highly competent GRU, and is the only fighting force that has been having success since the tide of the war swung in Ukraine’s favor following Kharkov and Kherson.
Again, what are the lives of a few thousand Ukrainian peasants against defeating such a worthy enemy?
Prigozhin on the front lines
Besides, the harder they make it for Wagner in Bakhmut, the harder Wagner has it on the home front, where they appear to be been singled out as enemies of the Russian MoD who need to be cut down to size. The failure to take Bakhmut will reflect poorly on Wagner’s rising political star domestically
But that’s just a theory, for now. I’m sure Prigozhin will weigh in on the situation soon enough and we will confirmation one way or another, eventually.
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The Ukrainians are up in arms over a video showing a Russian soldier executing a Ukrainian soldier taken prisoner. The Russian soldiers involved in the shooting claim that the Ukrainian had pictures and video of them torturing Russian prisoners and so they filmed his death and sent it to his Telegram channel as a message to his comrades.
Now, if this justifiable?
Well, even if the story presented by the Russian soldier is true, it still raises ethical or, dare I say it, moralconcerns.
But, seeing as morality is just a spook in people’s minds, the real concern has to be the effect that this has on the war effort and the welfare of the Slavic peoples. And the real culprit for this incident is the Russian MoD’s policy of releasing some of the most heinous Ukrainian death squad members in dubious and uneven prisoner swaps.
A similar phenomenon occurred when the death penalty was outlawed in most Western countries. Society reacted to this in a rather predictable way; people began demanding harsher sentences as a compensatory measure. And, all of a sudden, even fictional mystery detectives like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot begin executing the perpetrators themselves instead of handing them over to the police.
This is because the author, the character and the audience felt like justice would not be done, even with a life sentence for the bad guy at the end of the novel.
And the increasing brutality and sadistic conditions in mass prisons, which are largely supported by the public, seem to reflect this desire for harsh justice that a simple prison sentence does not deliver.
So, if the Russian troops know that these heinous torturers and anti-Russian butchers are going to be released in exchange for some oligarch in due time, they are far more inclined to not hand their prisoners over, or to take no prisoners at all.
But we don’t blame Hercule Poirot for killing a killer, do we?
The best that we can hope for is that the higher-ups run things in a sane and coherent way so that people believe that they can rely on the state to deliver justice. Barring that, are the people who take matters into their own hands evil?
I say we let our moral betters, the priests, leaf through their holy books and puzzle that one out and come back to us with their verdict. In the meantime, let’s move on and focus on more important matters.
$3000 for leaving the country or How the head of the Lvov region is profiting from the war
Details of another "corruption scheme" related to the general mobilization, which is used by officials of the western regions of Ukraine, have appeared.
Men of military age who are willing to pay, the authorities provide an opportunity to avoid being sent to the front and leave the country. Such a service costs from 3,000 to 7,000 thousand dollars.
According to media reports, the head of the Lvov Regional State Administration Maxim Kozitsky issued 60,000 permits to leave the country.
I am surprised by the figure. Just the other day, I spoke with a businessman from Ukraine who told me that it had only cost him $2000 to exit the country via Poland two weeks ago.
Furthermore, there are many other schemes by which people with money can exit the country. There are special groups who bring humanitarian aid into the country that allow one to buy a seat on their busses heading out of the country. Regular vehicles have a harder time getting across, and the Poles are notorious for sending people in their own personal people back across the border. But riding with a group on train or by bus is another matter. That’s the best way to get in and out.
Also, there is still the option of just paying off the military commission. I do not know what the price tag for that service is now, but back when this whole thing kicked off, you could get an exemption for as little as $500. And yes, I am sure that the price has since increased. But still, once struck off the list by the military commissioners, you’re pretty much golden for a while. As a one-time fee, it isn’t a bad deal. None of the people that I know, or my family knows or the friends that they know, is involuntarily on the front right now. Like all respectable people, they just paid the bribe or left the country.
Only Ukrainian patriots, or broke Ukrainians are getting signed up to fight.
The videos of MPs kidnapping people off the streets of Odessa are only part of the story. Once taken into custody, they still have to be processed. I would wager that if their “documents” are in order, these people are then released. Ukraine is only “scrapping the barrel” in terms of naive volunteers. There are still plenty of poor peasants and proles that can be called up for service. With only 100K deaths in a country of 27 million (low-ball estimate), Ukraine isn’t running out of cannon fodder any time soon.
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Ukraine is still running short of shells, but the tank problem is being dealt with rather rapidly.
Now, it is correct to point out that Ukraine needs about 1000 tanks to defeat Russia.
But, defeating Russia outright on the battlefield is not the NATO plan. Dragging the war out is. Giving Ukraine just enough to keep them in the game, strip mine the country of its resources as compensation, and continue the flow of Slavic blood and the destruction of the cities in the East is the real goal.
And things are going swimmingly.
At this point, I do not even know what Russia can do to resolve the situation. For many months, I took the Strelkov position and argued that more men as part of a rapid mobilization was necessary. But, if the constant reports of weapons, equipment, officer, and ammo shortages on the Russian side are real, then I can no longer advocate for a 2 million strong army in good consciousness. On paper, Russia ought to be able to field an army of this size (and larger), but if they are struggling to equip, train and utilize the men that have already been called up, then we’re at an impasse. Mass mobilization is no longer an option in the short term.
What should really make anyone with a consciousness want to rip his hair out is the realization that NATO and Moscow’s interests overlap now somewhat. Moscow is willing to settle for a frozen conflict on the territory of Ukraine. That way, they can lean back on their artillery, their infantry, assume defensive positions and prevent Ukraine from joining NATO or the EU (in theory anyways). And NATO just wants the Slavlands to bleed. Win, win.
To actually win win in Ukraine, Moscow would need to open up new factories, mobilize more men, fire a lot of officials and appeal to the Russian people. Clearly, they are very reluctant to do any of this.
Kiev, on the other hand, is incentivized to deliver either real or PR victories, like the recent incursion across the Russian border into Russia proper. This way, they can build their case to the hawks in the West to keep the money and the weapons flowing.
I suppose the only way in which this situation changes dramatically in one way or the other is if China gets involved one way or the other. The US being forced to switch focus to China or China actually providing a kind of lend-lease program for Russia would change things up.
Do you know why nobody is talking about destroying the bridges on the dniepr any more. I believe there only around 40. Surely this would create a logistical nightmare for the Ukrainian army.
Don't hold your breath waiting for China, there's nothing in it for them. Russia is viewed as a transactional buddy, or a potential place to extract goodies. What's distressing is that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian sacrificial lambs are cavalierly discarded in another gangster turf war. Like you said, it's the poor or naively patriotic who are thrown into the "meat grinder" while the affluent party throughout Europe.
Do you know why nobody is talking about destroying the bridges on the dniepr any more. I believe there only around 40. Surely this would create a logistical nightmare for the Ukrainian army.
Don't hold your breath waiting for China, there's nothing in it for them. Russia is viewed as a transactional buddy, or a potential place to extract goodies. What's distressing is that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian sacrificial lambs are cavalierly discarded in another gangster turf war. Like you said, it's the poor or naively patriotic who are thrown into the "meat grinder" while the affluent party throughout Europe.