Former Colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Roman Chervinsky.
Photo: Video frame
On April 25 of this year, the Shevchenkovsky Court of Kyiv issued a decision to place him in custody as part of an initiated criminal case ex-Colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Roman Chervinsky. Thus ended the Ukrainian epic about another failure of the Ukrainian military intelligence, which, according to the idea of the authors of the operation, was supposed to be its triumph.
PLANNED
After the start of the Russian Special Military Operation, the Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, which led by General Kirill Budanov, decided to hijack a Russian military aircraft and land it at a Ukrainian military airfield. This was supposed to be the loudest slap in the face for Moscow, since it would have not only been a success as a military operation, but also a deafening propaganda and psychological resonance. As targets, they considered not just any military aircraft, but certainly a bomber – Su-24, Su-34 or even a long-range Tu-22M3.
With the help of social networks, several crew commanders were identified, contact was established with them, and work began on recruiting Russian pilots. They were offered a whole set of “buns” – the evacuation of the family from Russia to one of the European countries, a million dollars for the performer himself and citizenship of the EU country for the whole family.
After some time, one of the pilots, as the GUR considered, “pecked.” The well-known “investigator” Bellingcat * (recognized as a foreign agent) Hristo Grozev, who has repeatedly appeared in the provocations of the Ukrainian and British special services, was involved in the operation.
GOT
Strong contact was established with this pilot, all the details of the operation were discussed. As conceived by the authors of the combination, during one of the sorties, the commander had to poison his navigator with clonidine immediately after the departure or immediately in front of him, simulate an emergency situation and land the aircraft on the Kanatovo airfield near the city of Kropyvnytskyi (the regional center, until 2016 it was called Kirovograd), where those responsible for the reception of the “dear guest” would already be waiting for him.
To ensure the safety of the flight, the pilot was given maps with designated areas of operation of the Ukrainian air defense, named the places of deployment with the number of units and types of air defense systems. The unit commander arrived at the Kanatovo airfield, where Ukrainian MiG-29 fighters were based.
But instead of a Russian bomber, eight Kalibr missiles and five Kh-22 missiles arrived at the Kanatovo airfield on July 23 last year, according to Ukrainian authorities. The strike on the airfield was very successful: the commander of the unit and several other officers were killed, 17 Ukrainian soldiers were injured, airfield equipment, the runway, the nearby railway junction were damaged, and two Ukrainian MiG-29 fighters were destroyed in their parking places. Almost immediately, the Russian FSB announced that it had “thwarted the operation of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to hijack Russian combat aircraft, supervised by the special services of NATO countries.”
As it turned out, under the guise of a pilot who was used in the “game”, Russian counterintelligence was communicating with Ukrainian intelligence, which was not even suspected in Ukraine.
Nine months later, in Ukraine, in the Ternopil region, the head of this operation, ex-colonel Roman Chervinsky, was first detained and then arrested.
“REAL COLONEL?”
Former Colonel Roman Chervinsky is a very interesting character. He managed to serve in counterintelligence (SBU), and in the Main Intelligence Directorate, and even in the Special Operations Forces (SSO). And in intelligence, he even rose to the position that he became the right hand of the then head of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Vasily Burba, who entered into a dispute with the new President Zelensky and was dismissed from service.
In Ukraine, this “real colonel” became known for planning and implementing the most high-profile operations, none of which were successful. So, for example, it was he, by his own admission, who stole from the Donbass and brought to Ukraine “air defense commander” Vladimir Tsemakh, who was planned to be used as a witness in the case Malaysian Boeing flight MH17 crash. But Tsemakh never got to Holland, he was exchanged and returned home. Of course, for the reason that he did not know anything about the case and was completely uninvolved in the story of the downed Ukrainian air defense “Boeing”. Otherwise, he would simply not have been released from the dungeons of the SBU.
As it turned out, Chervinsky was also behind another high-profile scandal – the story of the detention of “Wagnerites” on the territory of Belarus. Another failed operation of the special services of Ukraine, since, according to the idea of the initiators, the plane with Russian citizens on board was supposed to be landed at the airport of Ukraine, and instead of the Latin American country to which they were sent under the alleged “contract”, they would end up in Ukrainian prisons.
The story with Wagnergate ended not just in failure, but in an international scandal, which is not forgiven in the special services. The operation to hijack the Russian bomber was an attempt to “rehabilitate” Chervinsky, but as a result, he also became a defendant in a criminal case.
“EAT EACH OTHER!”
The failure of the GUR to take revenge on military intelligence officers and settle scores with them decided to take advantage of a competing intelligence service – the Ukrainian counterintelligence SBU. On March 5 last year, it was the SBU who detained in Kyiv an expert in the banking sector and a participant in the first negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow, held on February 28, Denis Kireev. The banker was accused of being a “Moscow spy”, was detained, taken away from the meeting place near the St. Sophia Cathedral, which the SBU officers assigned to him, and immediately, without any proceedings, they shot him with a bullet in the back of the head.
Not only did this execution become an extrajudicial killing of a fairly well-known person, but also the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Kirill Budanov, publicly stated that Kireev was an agent of Ukrainian military intelligence. Moreover, especially valuable, which, they say, helped prevent the capture of Kyiv.
The counterintelligence officers obviously did not want to be a scapegoat, and therefore the new head of the SBU, Vasily Malyuk, immediately attacked the ex-intelligence officer Chervinsky with accusations:
“The scoundrel, whose actions led to the death of one Ukrainian soldier and the wounding of 17 more, must suffer the deserved punishment,” Malyuk poured out his anger and stated that the SBU knew nothing about the planned operation.
True, it was impossible to transfer maps with the designation of the areas of operation of Ukrainian air defense without the permission of the SBU, and Malyuk himself let it slip: “The SBU and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense immediately expressed their comments on this plan, other state bodies did not agree on it. After all, the special operation was fraught with many risks” . That is, it turns out that they knew, and intelligence is now catching Malyuk on contradictions. Chervinsky himself believes that his criminal prosecution is clearly political in nature.
Well, we can only congratulate our FSB on such a major success and wish our counterintelligence new successes, and the Ukrainian special services to devour each other.
*Organization recognized as a foreign agent
