Russia planted spies in Ukraine long before the start of the war, but they lied about their success

Long before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin was building a network of secret agents to ease its way. Investigation Reuters shows that the penetration was much deeper than expected.

Photo: iStock

When the first armored vehicles of the Russian invading army reached the center of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on the afternoon of February 24, they encountered a Ukrainian unit tasked with protecting the infamous facility.

In less than two hours and without a fight, 169 fighters of the National Guard of Ukraine laid down their arms. Russia has seized Chernobyl, a storage facility for tons of nuclear materials and a key transit point on the way to Kyiv.

The fall of Chernobyl, site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, stands out as an anomaly of a five-month war: a successful blitzkrieg in a conflict marked by a brutal and intermittent advance by Russian troops and stubborn Ukrainian resistance.

Now the investigation has shown that Russia's success in Chernobyl was not an accident, but part of a long-standing operation by the Kremlin to install its secret agents in Ukraine.

Five people familiar with the Kremlin's preparations said military planners around President Vladimir Putin believed that with the help of these agents, Russia would only need a small military force and a few days to force the administration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to leave, flee or capitulate.

Through interviews with dozens of officials in Russia and Ukraine, as well as a review of Ukrainian court documents and statements to investigators related to the investigation into the behavior of people who worked at Chernobyl, Reuters found that the infiltration went much deeper than it was publicly acknowledged. Officials interviewed include people in Russia who have been briefed on Moscow's invasion planning and Ukrainian investigators tasked with hunting down spies.

“In addition to the external enemy, we, unfortunately, have an internal enemy, and this enemy is no less dangerous,” Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, said in an interview.

At the time of the invasion, Russia had agents in the Ukrainian defense, security and law enforcement sectors, Danilov said. He declined to name names, but said that such traitors must be "neutralized" at all costs.

Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation is investigating whether the National Guard acted illegally by handing over its weapons to the enemy, a local official said. But the National Guard says that the actions of the unit at the nuclear power plant were correct given the risks of conflict at a nuclear facility.

Court documents and testimonies reveal the role of Chernobyl security chief Valentin Viter, who is under arrest and investigation for being absent from his post. An extract from the state register of pre-trial investigations, which was reviewed by Reuters, shows that Viter is suspected of high treason, which, according to his lawyer, is unfounded. In a statement to investigators, Witer said that on the day of the invasion, he spoke on the phone with the commander of the National Guard unit. Viter, advising the commander not to endanger his unit, said: "Pity your people."

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One source with direct knowledge of the Kremlin's invasion plans said Russian agents were sent to Chernobyl last year to bribe officials and set the stage for a bloodless takeover. Reuters was unable to independently verify the details of this claim. However, Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation said it was investigating former high-ranking intelligence official Andriy Naumov on suspicion of treason for passing Chernobyl security secrets to a foreign state.

At the national level, sources familiar with the Kremlin's plans said Moscow expected to activate sleeper agents within the Ukrainian security apparatus. Sources have confirmed Western intelligence reports that the Kremlin was swaying Oleg Tsarev, the owner of the hotel, into running a puppet government in Kyiv. And in June, Ukraine's former prosecutor general revealed that Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, a friend of Putin, had an encrypted Russian-issued phone so he could communicate with the Kremlin.

Tsarev said the publication's account of how Moscow's operation unfolded in general "has very little to do with reality." He did not talk about his relationship with the Kremlin. Medvedchuk is in a Ukrainian prison awaiting trial on charges of high treason.

Although Russia captured Chernobyl, its plan to seize power in Kyiv failed. According to multiple sources in Russia and Ukraine, sleeper agents installed by Moscow have failed to do their job in many cases. Danilov, secretary of the Ukrainian Security Council, said the agents and their handlers considered Ukraine to be weak, which was a "complete delusion".

The people the Kremlin counted on as its proxies in Ukraine exaggerated their influence in the years leading up to the invasion, four sources familiar with the Kremlin's preparations said. The Kremlin relied on “clowns” for its planning—they don’t know much, but they always say what the leadership wants to hear because they won’t get paid otherwise,” said one of four people close to the Moscow-backed separatist leadership in eastern Ukraine.

Putin has become embroiled in a protracted full-scale war, fighting for every inch of territory at enormous cost.

But the Russian intelligence infiltration succeeded in one way: it sowed distrust within Ukraine and exposed the shortcomings of Ukraine's about 30-strong Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). This department has a complicated history with Russia, and now it is tasked with hunting down traitors and collaborators.

This intra-Ukrainian confusion became partially visible on 17 July. In a video address to the nation, President Volodymyr Zelensky removed the head of the SBU, Ivan Bakanov, whom he has known for many years, citing a large number of SBU officers suspected of treason. Ukrainian law enforcement sources said some SBU officials said they were unable to contact Bakanov for several days after the Russian invasion, adding to the sense of chaos in Kyiv.

Zelensky also said that 651 cases of alleged treason and complicity were initiated against persons involved in law enforcement agencies and the prosecutor's office. Zelensky specified that more than 60 employees of the SBU and the Prosecutor General's Office are working against Ukraine in the zones occupied by Russia.

Ties to the KGB

Moscow's spy apparatus has been closely linked to Chernobyl for decades. After the 1986 disaster, when a reactor exploded, scattering radioactive clouds across Europe, the Soviet KGB intervened. According to a declassified 1991 Ukrainian government minister's memo, over 1000 KGB officers took part in the cleanup.

The then head of the KGB, Viktor Chebrikov, ordered his subordinates to recruit agents from among the employees of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and instructed one of the KGB officers to take the position of deputy head of the security of a strategic facility.

Even after Ukraine became independent in 1991, Moscow's intelligence chiefs remained influential there. The first head of internal intelligence of Ukraine was Mykola Golushko, who began his career in Soviet Russia. Prior to his appointment, he led the Ukrainian branch of the Soviet KGB. Golushko left most of the Soviet-era officers in their places, he wrote in his 2012 memoirs.

After four months as head of Ukrainian intelligence, Golushko moved to Moscow to return to KGB headquarters, and in 1993 became head of Russia's newly created Federal Counterintelligence Service, the forerunner of today's FSB.

As Golushko writes in his memoirs, he was visited in Moscow by the deputy head of the State Security Service of Ukraine. He recalled how Ukrainian official Oleg Pugach turned to Golushko for help in finding fabric for sewing the uniform of Ukrainian intelligence officers. Golushko also wrote that Kyiv, lacking its own resources and experience, signed deals under which the SBU agreed to share intelligence information with Moscow. In exchange, Moscow provided supplies, technology and expert assistance in the investigation.

Scouts who worked in Chernobyl officially became part of Ukraine's security forces in 1991, but continued to follow orders from Moscow, said a person with direct knowledge of the invasion plan. “In fact, they were FSB officers,” he said.

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is a huge facility. A giant steel structure surrounds Reactor 4, the epicenter of the 1986 disaster. The object is located only 10 kilometers to the nearest point from the border with Belarus, in a dense and heavily irradiated forest. According to Western military analysts, Russian military planners considered control of Chernobyl strategically important, as it was on the shortest path of their advance to Kyiv.

A source with direct knowledge of the invasion plan said that in November 2021, Russia began sending undercover intelligence agents to Ukraine tasked with contacting officials responsible for ensuring the safety of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The purpose of the agents was to prevent armed resistance after the arrival of Russian troops. According to the source, Chernobyl, among other things, served as a transfer point for documents from the headquarters of the SBU. In exchange for payment, Ukrainian officials gave Russian spies information about Ukraine's military readiness.

Reuters was unable to verify the details of the source's report, and neither the State Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine nor the SBU responded to the news agency's questions. But a review of Ukrainian testimonies and court documents, as well as interviews with a local official, show that Kyiv is conducting at least three investigations into the behavior of people who worked at Chernobyl. According to these documents, the investigation identified at least two people suspected of providing information to Russian agents or otherwise assisting them in the takeover of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

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One of the men suspected by Ukrainian prosecutors and investigators of complicity with Russian forces is Valentin Viter, a 47-year-old SBU colonel. During the Russian invasion, Viter was the facility's deputy general manager, in charge of its physical security.

In May last year, Viter led a routine exercise that was supposed to simulate an attack by armed saboteurs. The armed fighters of the National Guard detachment guarding Chernobyl participated and practiced a forceful rebuff of the attackers. Viter, according to a video interview posted shortly afterward on the Chernobyl website, said the exercise was a success. In his words, he hoped that the Chernobyl security service "would not need to apply this knowledge and skills in a real situation."

According to a statement he made to investigators, Viter was seconded from the SBU to work in Chernobyl as head of security in mid-2019. In another statement, he said that on February 18 this year - six days before the Russian invasion - he went on sick leave due to breathing problems.

By then, Russia was reinforcing its troops in Belarus in preparation for an invasion. Satellite imagery taken by US company Maxar on February 15 shows a military pontoon bridge under construction across the Pripyat River in Belarus, north of the power plant. Ukraine's police and SBU have been put on high alert in response to the Russian threat, and the head of the national police has said security measures have been stepped up at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

On the morning of February 24, when the Russian invasion began, Viter told investigators that he was at his home in Kyiv. He called the head of the Chernobyl division of the National Guard, who was at his post. By that time, people at the enterprise knew that a column of Russian armored vehicles was moving in their direction.

Viter, according to his testimony to the Ukrainian investigators, told the commander: "Pity your people." Wither had no official authority over the National Guard, and Reuters was unable to determine if the commander heeded Witer's words when the unit surrendered after negotiations with the Russian occupiers. The statement of the National Guard named Yury Pindak as the commander of the unit.

When the Russian soldiers finally retreated from Chernobyl after 36 days of occupation, they took Pindak and most of his squad prisoner. Ukraine says the guards are being held in Russia or Belarus. Russian officials did not comment on the location of the unit.

Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation is investigating whether the National Guard violated the law by laying down their arms, said Yuriy Fomichev, mayor of the city of Slavutych, where the majority of Chernobyl victims live. Fomichev said he was not aware of charges being brought against anyone.

The National Guard refused to comment on the actions of individual commanders and members of the detachment tasked with protecting Chernobyl.

“Fighting on the territory of nuclear facilities is prohibited by the Geneva Convention,” the report says, and this is “one of the reasons” why there were no fierce battles at the facility.

Article 56 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions states that nuclear power plants and other dangerous facilities must not be attacked.

Viter was arrested in western Ukraine and is now in a pre-trial detention center on suspicion of failing to show up for work. An extract from the court register, seen by Reuters, shows that law enforcement agencies initiated a re-investigation of Viter on suspicion of treason by "deliberately assisting the military units of the aggressor country, the Russian Federation, in carrying out subversive activities against Ukraine." They have yet to uncover evidence linking him to the Russian intelligence services.

Viter said that two days after the capture of Chernobyl, he fled Kyiv for the safety of his family, but tried to keep in touch with colleagues at the station.

Cash and emeralds

The scale of Russia's infiltration into Chernobyl drew the Ukrainian authorities' attention to the SBU, for which Viter worked, the sources said. In particular, the military prosecutor's office in the Viter case is interested in his connection with a former Ukrainian official named Andrei Naumov.

Formerly an employee of the Ukrainian prosecutor's office, by 2018 Naumov was appointed head of COTIZ, a state-owned enterprise responsible for managing the property of the radioactive exclusion zone around Chernobyl. COTIZ's main role was to promote "extreme tourism" in the exclusion zone, but according to its website, the enterprise played a role in keeping the zone safe, among other things.

After a stay in Chernobyl, Naumov was appointed head of the internal security department of the SBU, a unit that investigates the actions of other officers suspected of criminal activity. Last year, the agency said it had prevented an attempt on Naumov's life by other SBU officers. Later, Naumov was dismissed from the post of head of the department.

According to a law enforcement source, Naumov disappeared shortly before the invasion. In June he ended up in Serbia. A Serbian police statement released on June 8 said police and anti-corruption agents had arrested a Ukrainian citizen with the initials “A. N." on the border with North Macedonia. He tried to get into North Macedonia from Serbia. The statement said a search of the BMW he was in found $124 and €924 in cash, as well as two emeralds. The publication said the individual and an unnamed BMW driver, who was also detained, are suspected of intent to launder money and emeralds that police believe came from criminal activity. Ukrainian Ambassador to Serbia Volodymyr Tolkach publicly confirmed that Naumov was the detainee.

The State Bureau of Investigation confirmed local media reports that it was conducting a pre-trial investigation against Naumov on charges of high treason. The department said they were investigating whether Naumov collected information about the security system at Chernobyl while working at a nuclear power plant and then in the SBU, and whether he transferred it to a foreign state. The statement did not say on what grounds he is suspected to have passed on the secrets, or whether there was concrete evidence linking him to Russia.

On March 31, President Zelensky, by his decree, stripped Naumov of the rank of brigadier general. On the same day, the Ukrainian president, in an emotional appeal, declared Naumov and another SBU general to be “traitors” who had violated their oath of allegiance to Ukraine.

Hundreds under surveillance

For Russia's military planners, the capture of Chernobyl was just a stepping stone to the main goal - to take control of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv. There, too, the Kremlin expected undercover agents in senior positions to play a decisive role, according to four people familiar with the plan.

Yuriy Lutsenko, who served as the Prosecutor General of Ukraine from 2016 to 2019, said that at the time of his departure from office, “hundreds” of Defense Ministry employees were under surveillance, as they were suspected of having links with the Russian authorities. Lutsenko said he believed there were a similar number of espionage suspects in other ministries.

Russia's military planners counted on the help of other allies, among other things, according to five sources.

One of the most notable loyalists was Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of the Ukrainian Opposition Platform – For Life party. Putin is the godfather of one of Medvedchuk's children. Since 2014, Medvedchuk has been openly speaking out against popular protests calling for closer ties with the European Union.

Medvedchuk was charged with high treason on May 11, 2021. SBU investigators then claimed that Medvedchuk was passing secret data about Ukrainian military units to Russian officials, he intended to recruit Ukrainian agents and secretly influence Ukrainian politics. According to the SBU, the day before the invasion, he left his home in Kyiv and planned to flee the country despite the terms of his bail.

Medvedchuk was detained on April 12. Zelenskiy immediately posted photos of him handcuffed, wearing a Ukrainian military uniform and looking shabby. Since then, Medvedchuk has been in custody.

Medvedchuk denied the allegations of treason, saying they were fabricated and part of a political conspiracy against him. Kremlin spokesman Peskov told reporters on April 13 that Medvedchuk had no unofficial contacts with the Russian leadership.

Lutsenko, Ukraine's former prosecutor general, said that prior to the Russian invasion, Medvedchuk used an encrypted phone given to him by the Kremlin, equipment reserved only for the most senior Russian officials and pro-Russian separatist leaders. Lutsenko said Ukrainian investigators managed to break into an encrypted phone system without revealing what they found.

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Another key figure, according to three sources familiar with Russia's plans, was Oleg Tsarev, a 52-year-old former member of the Ukrainian parliament. According to these sources, he was chosen by the Kremlin's invasion planners to lead the new interim government they were about to set up.

Tsarev has been sanctioned by Ukraine and the United States since 2014, when, after failing to win an election as president of Ukraine, he led an organization called Novorossiya. The group promoted the idea of ​​turning the southeast of Ukraine into a separate pro-Russian state. By early this year, he was in Russian-annexed Crimea, where he owns two hotels.

In the early hours of February 24, at the start of the invasion, Tsarev informed his over 200 Telegram followers that he had crossed Kyiv-controlled territory: “I am in Ukraine. Kyiv will be liberated from the Nazis.”

But Zelensky did not capitulate. Any expectation in Moscow that he would flee Kyiv or negotiate a deal that would succumb to Russian demands soon evaporated. In the weeks that followed, Ukrainian troops halted the advance of Russian troops on Kyiv.

Tsarev never made it to the capital. On June 10, he posted for his Telegram subscribers an advertisement for his seaside hotel in Crimea, where a night's stay costs $28 per person per night. According to Tsarev's posts on social media, he is now spending time in Crimea with visits to Moscow.

Paranoia and distrust

However, the Russian infiltration campaign aroused suspicion and distrust at some levels of the Ukrainian state, which limited its ability to govern, especially in the first few days after the invasion.

One egregious incident that heightened tensions in Kyiv's corridors of power, some sources say, is the death in early March of Denis Kireev, a former bank executive. He was a member of the Ukrainian delegation that took part in brief talks with Russian negotiators on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border that began on 28 February. In the photo, Kireev sits next to Ukrainian officials at the negotiating table.

An adviser to the Zelensky administration said that SBU officers shot Kireev while trying to arrest him as a Russian spy.

But the Military Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine notified that Kireev was its collaborator and intelligence officer, and that he died as a hero while performing an unspecified special assignment to defend Ukraine. A source close to the Ukrainian military said that Kireev was indeed a spy working for Ukraine. According to the source, he had access to the highest levels of the Russian leadership and passed on valuable information about invasion plans and other matters to his handlers in Kyiv.

Zelenskiy highlighted the toll Russian infiltration is taking on his hard-pressed country, referring to the many officials who are accused of betraying Ukraine.

“Such an array of crimes against the foundations of the state’s national security poses very serious questions for leaders,” Zelensky stressed. “Each of these questions will be answered correctly.”

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