Imagine, if the FBI had raided the home of J. Edgar Hoover, what must have been going on in the nation’s capital!
On Wednesday, Ukraine’s state security, the SBU, carried out a series of raids, including on the property of the recent head of the SBU, Arsen Avakov. The head of the SBU from 2014 to 2021, he was closely associated, from the beginning, with the development and use of the strongarm methods of the irregular militias, such as the Azov Brigade, and the notorious Mirotvorets hit list.
Avakov certainly knows where some bodies of Kiev’s opposition are buried. However, he explained, according to Ukrainskaya Pravda, that agents “were looking into Airbus contracts from six years ago,” and this much is undoubtedly true. When he ran the SBU, they had purchased dozens of second-hand French-made H225 helicopters, which bore a problematic track record. Recently, one of them crashed in a residential neighborhood near Kiev, killing six of the SBU leaders, including Avakov’s successor, Denis Monastyrsky.
The SBU also raided yesterday the premises of Igor Kolomoisky, the billionaire sponsor of Volodymyr Zelensky’s television career and his presidential campaign. Ukraine’s UNIAN news agency reported that SBU agents were interested in the activities of two energy companies, Ukrtatnafta and Ukrnafta. Zelensky had turned on Kolomoisky last Spring, stripping him of citizenship via a dubious assertion of extra constitutional powers.
Yet another target of the SBU raids was a longtime member of Ukraine’s Rada, former MP Vadim Stolar. Before Zelensky abolished eleven political parties last year, Stolar was a member of the largest one, the “Opposition Bloc – For Life” party.
The parliamentary head of Zelensky’s “Servant of the People” party, David Arakhamia, explained on social media yesterday, that the raids were part of the Kiev’s regime “spring jailings…. The country will change during the war. If somebody is not prepared to change, the state will come to them and help change.” However, notably absent from the recent wave of arrests and dismissals is the man thought to be the boss of Kiev, above and below ground, Andriy Yermak. His official position is the head of the Office of the President, and he both has a long history with Zelensky and is thought to be the choreographer of Zelensky’s actions.
