How Russian agents infiltrated Zelenskyy’s team - Sunday Times. PHOTO
American lawyer Marcus Cohen has offered Zelenskyy's team the services of Oleg Kulinich, the former head of the SBU office in Crimea, who was accused of treason, as a political expert to work on the future president's 2018-2019 election campaign.
This is reported by The Sunday Times, Censor.NET reports.
The Sunday Times cites a number of reports provided by a US source, documents seized from a computer in Moscow, conversations with former Zelenskyy administration officials, lobbying reports filed with the US Department of Justice, and information disclosed during the treason trial.
The beginning of Cohen and Kulinich's collaboration
In 2017, Kulinich hired Cohen to gather information from US law enforcement agencies about corruption and money laundering investigations against him and his partners in Moscow in an attempt to reach a plea deal and avoid prosecution.
The newspaper writes that in 2018, Kulinich, along with former National Security and Defence Council Deputy Secretary Volodymyr Sivkovych, met with a lawyer who handed them a report on the inspection of the then head of the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, Nazar Kholodnytskyi.
Two years later, Kholodnytskyi was forced to resign. Later, Ukrainian intelligence found 15 more files on him on an FSB computer that they managed to access in Moscow. In 2019, Sivkovic paid his American lawyer at least $300,000, according to intelligence gathered by the SBU and confirmed by Kulinich's lawyers.
Cohen did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations. Kulinich and Sivkovych's lawyers confirmed the meetings but claimed that they were simply cooperating with US law enforcement to help them investigate corruption.
Kulinich's infiltration of Zelenskyy's team
Before the 2019 presidential election in Ukraine, according to Kulinich's lawyers, Cohen introduced the Russian agent to Zelenskyy's campaign team as a political expert who would work on the campaign pro bono (for free - Ed.).
The publication notes that offers of assistance to the campaign were accepted without proper verification.
"Both men found themselves on the campaign trail, working to get Zelenskyy elected and linked to Washington," The Sunday Times writes.
It is noted that Cohen hired lobbyists and security consultants on behalf of the campaign. These contractors actually received money from Sivkovich in Moscow through shell companies, Kulinich's lawyers said, claiming that this was part of his legitimate activities as a political consultant.
Among the documents reviewed by The Sunday Times is a contract for $185,250 with the London-based Global Analytica, signed in March 2019. It was allegedly a company of reputable British security experts who would provide "personal security for Mr. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a candidate in the upcoming presidential election in Ukraine", including "cyber security" and the provision of seven "secure" smartphones for Zelenskyy and his team. The company was registered only a month before.
After Zelenskyy's victory, Cohen claimed in a lobbying document filed with the US Department of Justice that he had worked on Zelenskyy's campaign and now worked for Ivan Bakanov, who was appointed head of the SBU, and the Zelenskyy administration as a whole.
Cohen also claimed to have paid $70,000 of his own money to a Washington lobbying firm to secure introductions to members of the Trump administration. The publication writes that Kulinich worked with Cohen on the influence operation. According to a source who worked with the administration, their influence, in particular on the opening of negotiations in the US, was positively received by Zelenskyy.
Kulinich's subversive activities as the head of the Security Service of Crimea
It is noted that in 2020, Kulinich was rewarded with an appointment as head of the Crimean SSU office, where he was to act as an early warning system for any signs that Russia was preparing to strike north of the occupied peninsula.
Instead, he tried to undermine Ukraine's defense capabilities by encouraging corruption and diverting resources from counterintelligence.
"Kulinich managed to destabilize the work of this SSU department. He destroyed their counterintelligence work. In April 2021, he initiated large-scale anti-terrorist exercises in the Kherson region, which he used to identify weaknesses in Ukraine's defense," the SSU official said.
According to the Security Service, Kulinich collected information about Zelenskyy's movements and passed it on to the Russians.
But he began to arouse suspicion. Vasyl Maliuk, a counterintelligence officer at the SSU at the time, noticed that he was traveling abroad at the same time as Sivkovych, who had been under surveillance by Ukrainian intelligence for years. Kulinich was also under surveillance.
Kulinich's arrest
The article says that Kulinich knew about the plan to invade from Crimea, but did not allow Kyiv to pass on evidence of this preparation.
"In the first hours of the invasion, he blocked any attempts to inform the SSU leadership about the real situation in the region. He did not take measures to protect state sovereignty and disobeyed orders by taking his staff to another region. He even took away the weapons of the SSU officers," an unnamed SSU officer told the publication.
He was fired the following week. The network was closing.
Kulinich was arrested on 16 July 2022 on charges of passing state secrets to the Russians.
The incriminating evidence was found in hundreds of documents seized by the SSU from a computer in Moscow and during a subsequent search of a Kyiv apartment. They include photographs and videos of Kulinic and members of the Sivkovic family together abroad, as well as images of Kulinic with a man the US government has described as an "active agent of the Russian FSB". There are also messages from Kulinic to Sivkovic, the spy.
Kulinich's trial is ongoing. If found guilty, he faces up to 15 years in prison.
His detention led to a large-scale purge of the SBU and Bakanov's dismissal three days later, replaced by Malyuk, the counterintelligence officer who arrested Kulinich. The purge is still ongoing.
The Kulinich case
As a reminder, on 5 April 2023, the SBI and the SSU announced the completion of the investigation into the case of Oleh Kulinich, who is accused of high treason and cooperation with Russian special services. Intercepts of conversations between Kulinich and his curator Sivkovych were published, during which they discussed strengthening their influence on the SSU.
In February, Bakanov was subjected to an internal inspection, the results of which were not disclosed. The SBI stated that the inspection did not reveal any violations in Bakanov's actions in the Kulinich case.
In July 2023, the Security Service and the State Bureau of Investigation submitted to the court an indictment on high treason and other crimes against the former head of the SSU Main Directorate in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Oleh Kulinich, who, according to the investigation, acted in favour of the aggressor country.
