by Vitaly Portnikov

Ukraine has welcomed a U.S. intelligence report that clears the country in any official involvement of trying to influence the American presidential election.

But the government in Kyiv is still faced with a deep dilemma: How to react to U.S. intelligence accusations that influential Ukrainian MPs and businesspeople were used as puppets of the Kremlin to try and help get former President Donald Trump re-elected?

The U.S. intelligence community found no signs of involvement on the part of the Ukrainian government in subversive acts against the United States, according to a declassified report by the U.S. National Intelligence Council. 

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said this amounted to “an end to the myth about Ukraine interfering in the election”.

The U.S. intelligence report said the interference was a pro-Trump covert operation carried out by Russia. The report also said the Kremlin had a second goal: specifically using Ukrainian tycoons as its henchmen in an attempt to discredit the country, and thus lessen Washington’s support for the government.

But although Washington’s report makes clear that the Ukrainian government had nothing to do with the Kremlin’s pro-Trump special op, it also makes clear there was involvement on the part of individual Ukrainian politicians and political strategists – individuals who are now the targets of U.S. sanctions.

Foremost in the U.S. intelligence assessment is the assertion that the Kremlin “had purview over the activities of Ukrainian Parliament member Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian legislator who played a prominent role in Russia’s election influence activities”.

It also said Russian agents in Ukraine disseminated the “Poroshenko-Biden tapes” and that these Kremlin assets planted disinformation about Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in the American media – and even through the entourage of former President Trump.

Andriy Derkach is identified in the report and by Ukrainian commentators as a lead figure in the Kremlin’s covert pro-Trump operation – essentially the Russian leadership’s chosen representative in the scheme. Derkach held meetings with US figures such as Trump’s personal lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Guliani in the period before the election.

The 53-year-old Derkach is the son of the former head of Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service, Leonid Derkach. He also holds a PhD from Russia’s “spy school” – the ex-Soviet KGB (renamed FSB) Dzerzhinsky Institute.

Open sources say that Derkach’s political career was heavily promoted by virtue of pro-Russian political parties and groups. In parliament, he was one of the figures behind the creation of a group of MPs called “For Ukraine, Belarus, Russia” (acronym Zubr, or bison). Their essential goal was to firmly re-establish Moscow’s full control over Kyiv and Minsk.

Derkach, despite his open pro-Kremlin bent, even managed to hold on to his Parliament seat in the aftermath of the “Maidan” bloodbath in central Kyiv during 2014. 130 people were killed, including 18 police officers, during several days of anarchic violence. Security forces mowed down protesters who had taken over the city centre for weeks by firing indiscriminately into crowds of tens of thousands, setting off several days of urban warfare.

The mayhem ended with the now former President Victor Yanukovich, regarded as a Kremlin favorite, fleeing the country by helicopter under the dark of night. Yanukovich is now a fugitive, hiding somewhere in Russia, and almost never makes statements or appearances.

Derkach even managed to survive the “electoral revolution” of 2019, after President Volodymyr Zelensky came to power.

Observers attribute his uncanny survival skills to his reputation as an “uncrowned king” of the Sumy region of northeast Ukraine, and of his strong influence on the pro-Moscow branch of Ukraine’s Orthodox church.

It is hard to envisage this “uncrowned king” as a supporter of President Zelensky – although Derkach seems to possess Houdini-like skills to find common ground with whomever happens to be in power.

More Ukrainian parliamentarians

But the U.S. sanctions over election interference apply not only to Derkach, but also to another MP – former journalist Oleksander Dubinsky.

Unlike Derkach, who ran for Parliament as an independent, Dubinsky was elected to the Verkhovny Rada on the ticket of Zelensky’s “Servant of the People” party. And he was one of the most prominent and visible deputies of his faction.

His many years of working for the 1+1 television channel of kingpin oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky – who now also faces official U.S. sanctions in connection with corruption allegations – prompted his colleagues in the parliamentary gallery to name him the head of the “Kolomoisky faction” within the president’s party.

The U.S. sanctions imposed on Dubinsky, four months after similar punitive measures were slapped on Derkach and a mere 10 days before Joe Biden’s inauguration as president, have been interpreted as a signal that Washington was well aware of Kolomoisky’s own disinformation campaign.

In this light, the recent U.S. sanctions against Kolomoisky, welcomed by President Zelensky, appear quite different.

President Zelensky, by contrast, was agitated about the sanctions against Dubinsky and insisted on having him thrown out of the “Servant of the People” parliamentary group – despite resistance from many of his allies.

Even after his exclusion from the parliamentary group, Dubinsky continued on as head of that party in the Kyiv region until just a few days ago, when he was ejected from that position. Days before, he had been elected to the governing body of the party’s congress. That move to exclude him took place after the sanctions had been ordered against Kolomoisky – and analysts interpreted it as evidence of Kolomoisky’s persistent influence.

It was only then that Dubinsky – by direct order of the president, according to sources – was ejected from his regional role and kicked out of the Servant of the People party entirely.

“The task of cleaning out Kolomoisky’s man from the party was agreed personally with Zelensky,” said well-connected journalist Yuri Butusov.

It therefore becomes clear that Ukraine’s leaders in no way wanted to be linked with people suspected in Washington of involvement with Russian interference in the U.S. election.

Taking things further?

But even if Zelensky wanted no association with anyone facing U.S. sanctions and was prepared to throw them out of his party, it does not explain everything.

Whenever there is a desire to act against something, you generally find a desire to act clearly in favour of something else.

That Ukraine ended up as one of the focal points of the disinformation campaign against President Biden is significant, even if the country’s leadership was not directly involved.

Determining how such a grandiose special operation could occur in the very heart of Ukraine’s political machinery, with former elements of its security apparatus recording telephone conversations between the Ukrainian head of state and the U.S. vice-president requires considerable monetary resources. And, of course, a desire to determine whether President Zelensky’s long-time business partner, Ihor Kolomoisky, was directly involved in a such an operation and how a man so close to him became one of the targets of U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. intelligence report says that the Kremlin used Ukrainian politicians not only to compromise Biden but to compromise the Ukrainian state. But whether we will see a Ukrainian investigation into interference by its citizens in the U.S. election remains to be seen.

DISCLAIMER

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of The Tribune.