Kremlin moves to shut down European gas
Gazprom has declared “force majeure” on gas supplies to Europe, heightening fears of a complete cut-off that could trigger energy shortages across the Continent this winter. Russia’s state-controlled energy giant wrote in a letter to at least one European customer that it can no longer fulfil its supply obligations because of “extraordinary” circumstances outside its control. Panicked EU governments are already preparing for the possibility of a “winter of discontent”.
It is a conversation that has been repeated in Kyiv for months. “When this is over, there will be questions to answer,” a resident told me in May. “Questions such as: how did they take the south so quickly?”
Suspicions of double dealing burst into the open on Sunday when the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) arrested Oleh Kulinych, the body’s own former chief of Crimean affairs, on suspicion of high treason.
Hours later, Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Ivan Bakanov, the country’s chief spy, and Irina Venediktova, the prosecutor general, citing the large number of staff at their agencies in occupied territories who had switched sides to work with Russia.
Their suspensions are technically temporary. But the dramatic reshuffle – the most significant since the war began – reflects growing government frustration with the performance of Ukraine’s security service and concerns about its penetration by Russian spies. It also exposes longrunning pre-war political tensions that were largely set aside after the Feb 24 invasion. Mr Zelensky appointed Mr Bakanov, a childhood friend, to head the SBU in 2019. Like the president, Mr Bakanov was a performer and the appointment was widely criticised.
But the SBU had been struck by a series of scandals and there was an argument that someone from outside the shadowy security world would be better placed to act as a new broom.
With around 30,000 agents, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB in Ukraine is seven times the size of MI5 and has a vast brief that extends from counter-terrorism and fighting organised crime to running espionage and counter-espionage operations.
It has long had a reputation for unaccountability and penetration by Russian spies that was so bad that Mr Bakanov told Ukrainian MPS that he would need three years to reform it.
His dismissal on Sunday for “nonperformance of duties leading to human casualties or other serious consequences” reflects a belief in Mr Zelensky’s Kyiv office that he failed.
Vasyl Maliuk, his temporary replacement appointed yesterday, is a career security service officer.
Mr Kulinych, the former head of the SBU’S Crimea operations, is the latest of a series of high-ranking officers to be suspected of treason since the invasion. The role of “collaborators” in Russia’s rapid progress in the south has been hotly debated. Its southern task force burst out of Crimea almost unopposed and had captured Kherson by March 3. Speculation has swirled since about its apparent prior knowledge of minefields and Ukraine’s failure to blow up a key bridge in the strategic city.
Followers of Ukrainian politics will note that there are also political rivalries at play. Mrs Vendiktova’s replacement as chief prosecutor, Oleksii Simonenko, is seen as being close to Mr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andreii Yermak.
Mr Yermak has over the years has been accused of a range of misdeeds including stalling anti-corruption reforms and sabotaging an operation to arrest Russian mercenaries.
No evidence has emerged. But those allegations were resurrected last week when Victoria Spartz, a Ukrainianborn American congresswoman, wrote to Joe Biden demanding to know why the US was working with him and his deputy for law enforcement and anti-corruption reform, Oleh Tatarov.
Mr Simonenko is widely accused of stalling an investigation into alleged bribery by Mr Tatarov by handing it over to the SBU. Hunting traitors and Russian spies is one thing. Navigating Ukraine’s fractious domestic politics is quite another.