WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States will send another $450 million in military aid to Ukraine, including some additional medium-range rocket systems, to help push back Russian progress in the war, officials announced Thursday.

The latest package includes four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, which will double the number they have now. All four were prepositioned in Europe, and training on those systems has already begun with the Ukrainian troops who will use them, said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Anton Semelroth, a Pentagon spokesman. The first four HIMARS that the U.S. previously sent have already gone to the battlefield in Ukraine and are in the hands of troops there.

According to the Pentagon, the aid also includes 18 tactical vehicles that are used to tow howitzers, so the weapons can be moved around the battlefield, as well as 18 coastal and riverine patrol boats, thousands of machine guns, grenade launchers and rounds of ammunition, and some other equipment and spare parts.

The new aid comes just a week after the U.S. announced it was sending $1 billion in military aid to Ukraine, and as the Russian military continues to slowly expand its control in the eastern Donbas region. Ukrainian leaders have persistently asked for the more advanced, precision rocket systems in order to better fight back against Russia.

The Russian military captured two villages in eastern Ukraine on Thursday and is fighting for control of a key highway in a campaign to cut supply lines and encircle frontline Ukrainian forces, according to British and Ukrainian military officials.

Russian forces have been bombarding the city of Sievierodonetsk for weeks with artillery and air raids, and fought the Ukrainian army house-to-house. The HIMARS gives Ukraine the ability to strike Russian forces and weapons from further away, making it less risky for Ukrainian troops. The systems are mounted on trucks, which carry a container with six precision-guided rockets that can travel about 45 miles (70 kilometers).

It took about three weeks to train Ukrainian troops on the first four HIMARS, before the systems were moved to the fight.

The aid is part of the $40 billion in security and economic assistance passed last month by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden. And it is the 13th package of military weapons and equipment committed to Ukraine since the war began.

Overall, since the war started in late February, the U.S. has committed about $6.1 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, including this latest package. The $450 million in equipment and weapons will be from drawdown authority, which means the Defense Department will take it all from its own stocks and ship it to Ukraine.

AT A TIME WHEN dozens of countries are routinely expelling record numbers of Russian intelligence officers, news of the unmasking of yet another Russian spy is barely newsworthy. However, the case of Sergey Cherkasov/Victor Muller is different. That is because, unlike the vast majority of Russian spies with blown covers, he did not operate under diplomatic protection. This is not necessarily uncommon —in fact, there are probably dozens of Russian case officers operating internationally without diplomatic cover. What is unusual is that one of them has been publicly unmasked. What is more, the case offers some interesting pointers for those interested in contemporary human intelligence (HUMINT).

The Facts

According to the Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), which publicized the case last week, a man using a Brazilian passport attempted to enter Holland in April of this year. His passport had been issued under the name Victor Muller Ferreira, allegedly born to an Irish father and a Spanish-speaking mother in Niteroi (near Rio de Janeiro) on April 4, 1989. However, according to the AIVD, the man’s real name is Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, a citizen of Russia, who was born on September 11, 1985. Based on the information released by Dutch intelligence, Cherkasov is an intelligence officer of the Main Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, which is commonly known as the GRU.

The AIVD claims that the reason for Cherkasov’s visit to the Netherlands was to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, as a paid intern. He eventually planned to transition into full-time employment in the ICC, where he “would be highly valuable to the Russian intelligence services”. The AIVD reportedly notified the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service, which detained Cherkasov upon his arrival at Amsterdam’s Airport Schiphol. The Dutch government declared the alleged GRU officer persona non grata and promptly expelled him back to Brazil “on the first flight out”.

Cherkasov’s Cover and Legend

Cherkasov arrived in Holland with a cover, a term that refers to a fake operational identity used for purposes of espionage. It is unlikely that his cover was natural, meaning that he is probably not Brazilian by birth —though it is possible that at least one of his parents was/is not Russian by birth. What is more likely is that Cherkasov’s cover is contractual, meaning that it was crafted especially for him by the GRU after he was hired as an intelligence officer. This likely happened as many as 10 years ago, when Cherkasov was in his early 20s.

The next stage in Cherkasov’s career required him to enter a cosmopolitan lifestyle, designed to introduce a degree of opaqueness into his personal history. According to information released by the AIVD, the alleged spy’s parents —indeed most of his extended family— were allegedly dead by the time he was in his late 20s. That would have shielded his cover with an extra layer of protection, since no family members would be around to contest his claims. Cherkasov worked as a travel agent in Brazil before moving to Ireland in 2014, where he majored in political science at Trinity College Dublin. He then went on to complete a Master’s degree at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, which he received in 2020.

Throughout that time, Cherkasov muddled his background, built his fake persona of a motivated political science student, and severed all ties to Russia. He also carefully curated his online profile via social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as through blogging on geopolitics. In doing so, he appears to have gone out of his way to express views critical of the Kremlin, while at the same time espousing pro-Western positions on a wide range of topics. It is worth noting that, based on information that has surfaced since his unmasking, Cherkasov’s contacts in Ireland, the United States and elsewhere did not suspect that he had any ties to Russia, let alone Russian intelligence.

The reason why Cherkasov managed to avoid suspicion by those around him was that he was able to craft a multi-level legend. The term refers to an entire universe of informational and physical artefacts that support one’s cover. These include an operative’s digital profile, as well as their biographical details, family life, educational history, personal interests, etc., that breathe life to their cover. Furthermore, building a legend encompasses the meticulous memorization of minute details, anecdotal stories and memories of one’s life, as these have the ability to strengthen the authenticity —and therefore credibility— of one’s cover. This can be seen in Cherkasov’s draft autobiographical note, which the AIVD somehow managed to acquire, and which it publicized last week in Portuguese, Dutch and English.

Some observers referred to this document as “extraordinary”. That is true, but only in the sense that it has been made available to the public. In reality, this document is typical of the kind of detailed biographical sketches that deep-cover operatives are required to produce —usually in the language of their cover— while building their legend. The document appears to be an early biographical sketch produced by Cherkasov in the process of creating his fake identity. He would have shared this draft with his support operations officer, seeking detailed feedback. He would then have repeated this process until the information contained in the document was convincing even to someone who grew up in the very neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro that Cherkasov/Muller claims to have lived.

Remaining Questions

Just how that AIVD came to be in possession of this fascinating document remains unknown. There is also the question of just how the AIVD became aware of Cherkasov’s links with the GRU. Given that the spy lived in Ireland and the United States in the past several years, it is likely that operational carelessness on his part could have raised suspicions among people around him, thus triggering a counterintelligence investigation. It is also possible —though not likely— that his ICC internship application resulted in a detailed examination of his background by the AIVD, which is aware of attempts by foreign countries to embed spies on Dutch soil through the ICC and other international organizations based in Holland.

Perhaps the biggest question, which also remains unanswered, is why the Dutch did not arrest Cherkasov, choosing instead to send him back to Brazil “on the first flight out”. One would imagine it is not every day that a Western intelligence agency gets its hands on a deep-cover Russian operative. Cherkasov’s background, training and mission details would have been of interest to a host of Western government agencies. Did the Dutch already know everything they needed to know about him? Would it have been difficult to legally justify Cherkasov’s detention without exposing —and thus endangering— the source or information that led to his unmasking? Or could it be that the Dutch government did not wish to enter into a prolonged tit-for-tat contest of expulsions with Moscow, which might weaken its own intelligence presence inside Russia? These questions are among several that are unanswered, and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

* Dr. Joseph Fitsanakis is Professor of Intelligence and Security Studies at Coastal Carolina University. He specializes in intelligence collection involving SIGINT and HUMINT.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 20 June 2022 | Permalink

Some said the old friends rarely speak these days, save for government business. Ensuring a smooth transition may be tricky with the war still raging, with one official telling POLITICO that Zelenskyy is worried about the optics of sacking someone from his inner circle. For now, much of the SBU’s daily operations are being run from the presidential office and people still in good graces of Zelenskyy and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.

Bakanov is a lanky 47-year-old who’s been at Zelenskyy’s side since the latter rose from a scrawny comedian in the industrial, south-central city of Kryvyi Rih to a muscular war-hardened leader famous well beyond Ukraine’s borders. Bakanov’s appointment in 2019 was criticized by opposition parties who said someone with his background was unfit to lead the top intelligence-gathering agency. But as one of the president’s most trusted confidants and business partners, there was little opponents could do to stop the move.

Now some feel vindicated as criticisms of Bakanov reverberate in the halls of government and parliament. Many in Kyiv allege that he failed to respond to Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24 and properly command his behemoth department of over 30,000 agents.

“We are highly unsatisfied with his job and are working to get rid of him,” a top Ukrainian official close to Zelenskyy told POLITICO on the condition of anonymity to talk about sensitive personnel issues. “We are not satisfied with his managerial, you know, [skills] because now you need … anti-crisis management skills like we don’t think that he has.”

Zelenskyy’s office, Bakanov and the SBU did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment.

The officials and the Western diplomat all said the concern is greater than just Bakanov — it’s also about the decisions of several senior agency personnel in the first hours and days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that may have cost the country precious territory, including the strategic city of Kherson.

Gen. Serhiy Kryvoruchko, head of Kherson’s SBU directorate, ordered his officers to evacuate the city before Russian troops stormed it, against Zelenskyy’s orders, authorities allege. Meanwhile, Col. Ihor Sadokhin, his assistant and head of the local office’s Anti-Terrorist Center, is alleged by authorities to have tipped off Russian forces heading north from Crimea about the locations of Ukrainian mines and helped coordinate a flight path for the enemy’s aircraft while he fled in a convoy of SBU agents going west.

Kherson was the first and so far the only major Ukrainian city captured by Russian forces since the start of the all-out invasion. It was occupied by the Russian army on March 3, seven days after President Vladimir Putin launched his new offensive.

The Ukrainian officials said Russian troops were able to take Kherson so easily because of the failure on the part of SBU officials there to blow up the Antonovskiy Bridge that crosses the Dnipro river, allowing Russian troops to cruise into the city.

Underscoring the lack of loyalty within the top ranks of the SBU, a third former senior official, Andriy Naumov, a brigadier general who headed the agency’s internal security department — a unit whose responsibilities include preventing corruption within the SBU — fled abroad a few hours before Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.

Ukrainian authorities have charged all three former SBU officials with state treason. In his late-night video address on March 31, Zelenskyy stripped Naumov and Kryvoruchko of their ranks and denounced them as “traitors.”

Sadokhin and Kryvoruchko were detained by Ukrainian authorities; Naumov was detained on June 7 in Serbia, where law enforcement officers found him with an alleged German smuggler and 600,000 euros, $125,000, and a stash of emeralds. Kyiv is fighting for his extradition to face charges at home.

“There’s so many regional SBU managers who behaved really strange. Some ran away. One guy, for example, in Chernihiv, he [burned down] the whole building of the SBU for no reason, you know, like, because he said that he has no time to get all the documents out,” said the top Ukrainian official who spoke to POLITICO. Police and other law enforcement agencies in the city managed to successfully remove sensitive documents from their offices, the official said.

Known by its Ukrainian acronym, the SBU is the successor agency of the Soviet-era KGB. With more than 30,000 employees, the SBU is more than seven times the size of the U.K.’s MI5 and nearly the size of the FBI — which employs 35,000 people — despite Ukraine being 16 times smaller than the U.S. While it is tasked with traditional domestic intelligence and counterintelligence gathering, the SBU’s activities also go beyond the scope of similar agencies in Western nations; among its duties is combating economic crimes and corruption.

With this sweeping mandate, there have long been accusations of abuse of power and corruption within the agency, including in units meant to fight those very things, and it has largely proved impervious to change. Indeed, attempts to reform the SBU have sputtered.

It is also known to be infiltrated by Russian spies, much to the detriment of the country’s security interests and despite efforts to root them out.

Criticism of the agency reached a critical mass in 2018, when the SBU faked the death of a dissident Russian journalist to allegedly expose a hit squad hired by Moscow to assassinate high-profile figures inside Ukraine. International media watchdogs were outraged and Western governments winced.

After Zelenskyy won a landslide presidential vote in 2019, he set out to clean up the SBU and tapped his pal Bakanov to lead the charge in an attempt to showcase the newly elected leader’s determination to prove to the West that Kyiv was serious about reforms.

Whether he has been successful in doing so is debatable at best, observers say.

Alex Kokcharov, a London-based country-risk analyst focused on Ukraine and Russia for S&P Global, said a series of scandals in recent years had cast a shadow over the SBU. He said Kyiv wasted years not overhauling the agency when many feared a large-scale Russian attack was bound to happen.

“All these scandals around the SBU involved in the questionable practices over their attempts to conduct economic-related business investigations, and the interagency infighting between different security services of Ukraine [led to] not enough preparation done in specific areas like the south and the east, which were the more expected Russian targets,” Kokcharov said.

One of the SBU’s strengths, he said, has been the agency’s ability to identify saboteurs and collaborators outside its walls, such as civilians who have helped direct Russian artillery fire on the ground, often in return for money or the promise of a better life under Moscow rule.

But right now, the spotlight is less on the SBU’s successes and more on its failures. And Bakanov, with the exception of a few photo ops with Zelenskyy, has kept a low profile since the invasion began.

“I hope at the end of the day we will really have a proper investigation of how it happened that this one bridge [was not destroyed],” the top Ukrainian official said, noting that the government pins the fall of Kherson on the SBU’s lack of preparedness.

Kherson’s capture has allowed Putin’s forces a critical foothold in the country’s southern region along the Black Sea coast. For that, the top official said, pointing the finger at Bakanov, “somebody has to suffer.”

The Politico publication, citing its sources, announced the intention of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to dismiss Ivan Bakanov from the post of the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) due to a number of unsuccessful operations and losses in Kherson.

So, according to the publication, due to failures and losses in Kherson, Bakanov fell out of favor with Zelenskyy.

Citing the words of four officials close to the president and a Western diplomat who advised Kyiv on reforms, Politico writes that Zelenskyy is seeking “to replace Bakanov with someone more suitable.”

Bakanov came under criticism from people close to Zelenskyy after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, as the head of the SSU failed to properly cope with new challenges.

As Ukrainian News Agency reported, during the war, Bakanov received about half a million hryvnias in salary.

Earlier, Dnipro City Mayor Borys Filatov accused Bakanov and Danilov of unwillingness to fight organized crime groups in Dnipro.

Los efectos de vapes, gomitas y otros productos con alta concentración de THC en el cerebro adolescente y más para el fin de semana.