In recent days, several high-profile trials of collaborators have ended in Ukraine. In Kharkov, a local man received a life sentence for aiming a Russian missile at the building of the Kharkov Regional State Administration in the first days of the invasion. The day before, a similar sentence was passed on a resident of the Kirovograd region, who transferred data about the Ukrainian defense departments to the Russian special services.
However, not all those convicted of collaborating with the enemy serve their sentences. Many traitors receive sentences in absentia, such as the current Gauleiter of the occupied part of the Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, to whom the court sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
Civil collaborators
Among those convicted of collaborating with the enemy, there are many quite ordinary civilians who, finding themselves in temporarily occupied territories, decided to cooperate with the enemy in order to gain certain power and money.
The Office of the Prosecutor General reported one of the most striking examples of this recently. In de-occupied Kupyansk, a local resident who collaborated with the occupiers was sentenced to 13 years in prison for high treason. The story is quite typical: the man retired at one time, and before that he was an employee of the road transport service of Ukraine under the police. However, after the start of the temporary occupation of part of the Kharkov region in 2022, the man voluntarily went to work for the occupiers, taking the position of inspector of the so-called road patrol service.
His duties included checking documents at checkpoints, as well as registering road accidents. As soon as Kupyansk was deoccupied, the collaborator fled to Kharkov, where he lived with his friends. In April 2023, he was informed of suspicion in absentia, and already in the summer of this year the man was detained and sent to a pre-trial detention center. And just the other day he received his well-deserved punishment.
And these are not isolated cases when, by court decision, real punishments are imposed on citizens of Ukraine for collaborating with the occupiers. For example, in October 2023 in Vinnitsa, a resident of Bakhmut was sentenced for high treason to 15 years in prison with confiscation of property, who in the summer of 2022 voluntarily became a member of an agent network operating in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Nikolaev, Zaporozhye and Odessa regions. This network, by the way, was organized by a former policeman from Crimea, and the agents themselves collected intelligence information for a fee, passing it on to the enemy. The investigation proved that the convict, on the eve of the start of the defense of Bakhmut last year, collected information about the locations of the Ukrainian military and their equipment. Subsequently, this information fell into the hands of the occupying forces, who used it for artillery and missile attacks on Ukrainian Armed Forces. Subsequently, the man was detained by the SBU at his place of residence and taken to the Vinnytsia region, where he received 15 years in prison.
In general, the intelligence networks that the Russians create are not only about attracting some Ukrainian civilians to them. In recent years, Ukrainian intelligence services have exposed even their high-ranking employees who turned out to be traitors while working for Russia.
The case of ex-General Shaitanov
Even before the start of a full-scale war, in the spring of 2020, the SBU counterintelligence detained then Major General of the Security Service of Ukraine Valery Shaitanov. He was suspected of high treason, because according to the investigation, Shaitanov was a recruited agent of the Russian FSB.
Shaitanov himself was a fairly well-known figure in the Ukrainian intelligence service. For example, it was he who was one of the leaders of the Alpha special forces group that stormed the House of Trade Unions on February 18, 2014 during the Revolution of Dignity. Then, during the assault, several Maidan protesters died. After the change of power in the country at the end of winter 2014, Shaitanov not only remained working in the SBU, but also received the rank of general. The media also wrote that in the spring of 2014, when Russia began its aggression in the Donbass, it was Valery Shaitanov, as a representative of the Alpha special forces, who negotiated with one of the terrorist leaders, Alexander Khodakovsky. In the fall of 2015, Shaitanov was the head of the operation to detain the then deputy chairman of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional State Administration Gennady Korban.
And in the spring of 2020, it turned out that, according to the investigation, Shaitanov is an FSB agent with the call sign “Bobyl”, who was in secret communication with a certain FSB Colonel Egorov, who worked in the Department of Counterintelligence Operations of the 1st FSB Service. This unit specialized in planning and carrying out reconnaissance and sabotage and reconnaissance actions in Ukraine and other states.
At the same time, the SBU stated that the duties of the recruited Shaitanov included planning and carrying out terrorist acts in Ukraine, and for this the FSB promised him 200 thousand dollars and a Russian citizen’s passport. Shaitanov was also credited with planning the murder of Adam Osmayev, a volunteer and the head of the peacekeeping battalion named after Dzhokhar Dudayev, who fought against the invaders in Donbass. In Russia, the latter was even suspected of an attempt on Putin’s life.
The assassination attempt on Osmayev himself and his wife Amina Okueva, who was also an ATO volunteer, was first committed in June 2017 in Kyiv. However, then the couple managed to survive. However, at the end of October 2017, a second attempt was made on them in the Kiev region. Then the car in which Osmayev was traveling with Amina Okueva was fired upon. The woman died from the shots she received, and Osmayev himself received gunshot wounds, but survived.
In turn, Shaitanov, according to investigators, also leaked to the Russian special services the circumstances of some operations in the ATO and Joint Forces Operation zone that took place before 2020, and also recruited senior officers of the special and intelligence agencies of Ukraine to work for the FSB. It can be assumed that Shaitanov himself was recruited by the Russian special services during the time of Yanukovych, because at that time Russian special services often “exchanged experience” with their Ukrainian colleagues and actually felt at home in Ukraine.
In the summer of 2023, Valery Shaitanov was sentenced to 12 years in prison for high treason and a completed attempt to commit a terrorist act. As it turned out after the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation at the end of winter 2022, there are quite a lot of “shaitans” in senior positions in the Ukrainian special services.
Agent Kulinich
One of the most high-profile cases in the fight against Russian agents in the SBU is the detention of the former head of the SBU in Crimea, Oleg Kulinich, on charges of treason. He received his position in the fall of 2020, and a week after February 24, 2022, when the Russians occupied most of southern Ukraine, the president fired Kulinich from his post as head of the SBU in Crimea. In the summer of 2022, he was detained on suspicion of treason.
After the completion of the criminal investigation conducted by the State Bureau of Investigation, it turned out that Kulinich was a confidant of Vladimir Sivkovich, the former deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, who has been hiding in Russia since 2014. By the way, in the summer of 2022, Sivkovich was also informed of suspicion of treason. So, Kulinich, according to investigators, actively collaborated with the so-called “political office” created by the FSB and Sivkovich, whose task was to introduce the “right people” into various government and law enforcement agencies. Of course, such “necessary people” eventually worked for the Russian intelligence services in one way or another. Kulinich also needed, on instructions from his curators, to conduct reconnaissance and subversive activities against Ukraine, and also incite Ukrainian citizens to treason.
However, the most important thing is that, according to the investigation, Oleg Kulinich knew in advance that the Russians would attack the south of Ukraine from the temporarily occupied Crimea. However, he carefully hid this information from the senior leadership of the SBU. Moreover, when the offensive of the invaders had already begun, Kulinich did not take any measures at all to protect the southern regions of the country, and also deliberately did not inform his leadership about the real state of affairs in the south of Ukraine. It is noteworthy that during the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, Kulinich himself fled to Kyiv. He is now in pre-trial detention, awaiting sentencing, and his case went to trial this summer.
In general, Kulinich was a fairly important element in the subversive activities of the Russians against Ukraine. According to law enforcement officers, he was supposed to sneak another possible Russian agent, Andrei Naumov, into the position of one of the heads of the SBU.
Ex-General Naumov, who fled abroad
So another “big fish” who is suspected of high treason is the former head of the Main Directorate of Internal Security of the SBU, Andrei Naumov, who literally a few hours before the full-scale invasion of Russia left Ukraine. At one time, Naumov was called almost the second person in the SBU, because he had such influence while heading the Internal Affairs Directorate of the special services. By the way, at the end of March 2022, President Vladimir Zelensky said in a video message that Naumov was stripped of the rank of general due to the fact that he turned out to be a traitor. In June 2022, Naumov was detained by Serbian law enforcement officers for smuggling undeclared valuables. At the same time, the Serbian side received a request for the extradition of Naumov, but this has not yet happened. Moreover, at the end of September, a Serbian court sentenced Naumov to one year in prison for money laundering. Therefore, the ex-SBU official is unlikely to be brought to Ukraine in the coming year.
Another interesting thing about the story with Naumov is that he is actually connected with the same Oleg Kulinich, the former head of the SBU in Crimea. The fact is that in the spring of 2023, the State Bureau of Investigation released an intercepted conversation between another suspect of treason, Vladimir Sivkovich, and Kulinich. So they discussed an attempt to lobby Naumov, who had the pseudonym “Okhotnik,” for the position of first deputy chairman of the SBU. Fortunately, this did not happen, and Naumov himself even remained as head of the Main Directorate of Internal Security of the SBU in the summer of 2021. However, in the summer of 2022, the SBI indicated that Naumov could transfer information about security systems in the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to the Russian special services, and this information constitutes a state secret. The fact is that before his arrival at the SBU in 2019, Naumov headed the state enterprise “Center for Organizational, Technical and Information Support for Exclusion Zone Management.” Therefore, it can be assumed that it was in this position that he collected data on the security system in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant zone. For now, the problem is that Ukrainian law enforcement officers cannot bring the former general to justice, because, as stated, he is in prison in Serbia. And this is not an isolated case where former government officials in Ukraine suspected of treason cannot yet be brought to justice.
Top traitors in Russia
One of the most odious among this cohort is former people’s deputy Andrei Derkach. Back in the fall of 2022, he was put on the wanted list on suspicion of treason. Rumor has it that Derkach fled Ukraine even before the start of the full-scale invasion and is in Russia. In the summer of 2023, the NABU, in cooperation with the SAPO, completed an investigation into Andrei Derkach, coming to the conclusion that during 2019-2022, the ex-people’s deputy received more than 500 thousand dollars from the Russian special services for conducting subversive activities against Ukraine. For example, he publicly worked to discredit the image of Ukraine in the world, and also made efforts to worsen diplomatic relations between the United States and Ukraine, and further complicate Ukraine’s integration into the EU and NATO.
It should be noted that Andrei Derkach’s father, the late Leonid Derkach, served in the KGB of the USSR. From 1998 to 2001 he was chairman of the SBU. Therefore, we can assume where Andrei Derkach’s connections with the Russian special services “grow” from. By the way, when in 2006 Andrei Derkach became the president of Energoatom, by a strange coincidence of circumstances, or perhaps not, at the same time the vice-president of the company was the same Oleg Kulinich, who is now awaiting a court verdict on charges of treason.
Derkach himself, as Ukrainian law enforcement officials recently stated, was part of a criminal group organized by Russian intelligence in Ukraine. We are talking about the so-called “Dubinsky case”. It was the current people's deputy Alexander Dubinsky that the SBU detained in November on suspicion of high treason.
So, according to the investigation, Dubinsky, together with Derkach, had instructions from the Russian special services to undermine the socio-political situation in Ukraine, as well as to work to undermine the image of Ukraine in the world. One example is a series of press conferences during which Derkach stated that the son of current US President Joe Biden, Hunter, allegedly carried out corrupt activities in Ukraine when he was one of the members of the board of directors of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Group, which belongs to the minister of the Yanukovych era. Nikolay Zlochevsky.
The already mentioned Dubinsky was also announced as a suspect, but unlike Derkach, he was detained and is already in a pre-trial detention center while the pre-trial investigation continues.
So, as we see, Ukrainian law enforcement officers still have a lot of work to do when it comes to state traitors of Ukraine. For years, Russia has been creating intelligence networks in Ukraine, which included not only civilians, but also high-ranking officials at various levels from various government agencies. And if those agents who are in Ukraine can be detained and convicted of treason, then there are many cases when these state traitors are abroad.
Moreover, if they are in Russia, like Derkach or Sivkovich, it is now almost impossible to return them to Ukraine. Do not forget that a few years ago, suspicions of treason were announced, for example, to the former Ministers of Defense of Ukraine Pavel Lebedev and Dmitry Salamatin. The first headed the Ministry of Defense from 2012 to 2014, and the second was his predecessor, leading the ministry during 2012, and before that he headed Ukroboronprom. Now both Lebedev and Salamatin are wanted, hiding in Russia.
Let us recall that the former head of the government of Ukraine Mykola Azarov received the same suspicion of high treason. In general, Yanukovych, by a court decision, received 13 years for high treason back in 2019, but he is not in prison precisely because he is hiding in Russia.
In addition, according to available information, the former chairman of the Party of Regions faction, Alexander Efremov, is now hiding in Russia, and one of the leaders of the OPZZH, Vadim Rabinovich, is in Israel.
As we see, Ukrainian law enforcement officers and courts may not be too fast, but they are working and passing sentences on traitors. However, not everyone receives real punishment. So far, those who managed to escape outside Ukraine have managed to avoid responsibility. Either even before the start of a full-scale invasion, which is typical for many high-ranking collaborators, or he fled with the occupation forces from the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
At the same time, thousands of cases against collaborators are now at the investigation stage and it is very important that these cases do not “drown” in bureaucratic routine. After all, society demands a fair trial for everyone who collaborated with the occupiers.
