• Home
  • Politics
  • News
  • Business
  • Health
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • Lifestyle
  • Education
  • Opinion
Thursday, 8 June, 2023
  • Login
topfmonline.com
 
  • Home
  • News
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Sports
  • Education
  • Technology
  • Foreign
No Result
View All Result
topfmonline.com
No Result
View All Result
Home Foreign

Ukraine investigates, attacks those who collaborate with Russia

TOPFM NEWS by TOPFM NEWS
July 11, 2022
in Foreign
A A
0
Ukraine investigates, attacks those who collaborate with Russia
0
SHARES
0
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Kyiv, Ukraine – Volodymyr Saldo claimed that in 2016, he was handcuffed to a metal bed for 59 days in the Dominican Republic, almost 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) away from home.

He alleged that the kidnapper, Igor Pashchenko, his former business partner from the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, electrocuted him so he would read certain phrases into a dictaphone.

Saldo claimed Pashchenko used those phrases to demand a hefty ransom from his family – and to edit together an audio recording of Saldo’s “confession” to collaborating with Russia.

When Saldo, a construction tycoon and Kherson’s former mayor, was released and returned home, he maintained that he had never worked for Russians.

“I have interesting plans about Kherson and its future,” he told the Interfax news agency in March 2017.

A year later, Pashchenko was killed contract-style, with two shots to the head in Kherson; his relatives alleged that Saldo ordered the murder.

And this March, Moscow occupied Kherson and the surrounding region – and made Saldo its governor.

Traitors’ traits

Some 480 people – from Kherson to Kharkiv in Ukraine’s northeast – are being investigated for collaboration with the Russian invaders, Ukrainian prosecutors said on June 10.

The turncoats surrender cities, towns and districts, snitch on pro-Kyiv activists, tell Russians the location of Ukrainian forces, arms depots and minefields, and even coordinate Russian artillery fire, prosecutors said.

Enough is known about the collaborators to identify their key traits, a political pundit says.

“A collaborator’s set: a mandatory government job in the past, local connections, interests in local businesses, beef with the [central] government,” Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera.

“A pro-Russian stance or games in this political field, criminal connections, love for money and power that hasn’t been satisfied in the existing system of coordinates,” he added.

The overwhelming majority of collaborators, including Saldo, were members of pro-Russian parties that have been disbanded and outlawed during the war.

Most of them were the political offspring of the largest pro-Kremlin political behemoth, the Party of Regions, whose head, President Viktor Yanukovych, fled to Russia in 2014 after months-long protests in Kyiv.

But some collaborators hail from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s political camp.

One is Aleksey Kovalyev, a 33-year-old top agriculture official in occupied Kherson, Ukraine’s bread and fruit basket.

He was a member of Servant of the People, a party hastily put together by Zelenskyy, a comedian turned politician, after his out-of-the-blue victory in the 2019 presidential elections.

Dwindling numbers

The turncoats of this war have plenty of predecessors.

In 2014, Ukrainian officials and law enforcement officers switched sides in Crimea – or sided with Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk.

But their number had dwindled by this year, testing Moscow’s true clout in Ukraine.

In Crimea, thousands of officials and officers chose to stay in their jobs after the annexation.

“That’s why for Russia, the annexation was painless from the viewpoint of forming local administrations,” Kyiv-based analyst Ihar Tyshkevich told Al Jazeera.

Those who refused faced threats and jail.

Among them was Ihor Voronchenko, deputy head of Crimea’s coastal defence, who was briefly held in a Moscow pre-trial detention centre.

“There was a solitary cell, without a window, when you lose the sense of time, space. It affects one psychologically,” Admiral Voronchenko told Al Jazeera in 2018, when he was head of Ukraine’s navy.

Weeks after the annexation of Crimea, officials and officers in Donetsk and Luhansk saw collaboration with Moscow as a way of showing off their regional patriotism – and showing it to Kyiv’s new, pro-Western government.

But there were fewer of them than in Crimea, and as a result, “there was a deficit of qualified servants, and Russia has to bring in Russian nationals every year, with every rotation of officials,” Tyshkevich said.

The separatist halls of power were filled with grotesque characters.

The current head of the so-called “people’s republic” of Donetsk is Denis Pushilin, a bearded 41-year-old – and former employee of a confectionery company who once ran a Ponzi scheme in the region.

His predecessor, Pavel Gubarev, was a boxing enthusiast who proudly reminisced about his membership in Russian National Unity, an openly neo-Nazi movement whose members committed hundreds of hate crimes.

Some collaborators try to convince their relatives to switch sides.

Mykola Akhbash, a police officer in the Ukraine-controlled part of Donetsk, recalled how his cousin joined the rebels – and wanted him to follow suit.

“But I told him where to go,” Akhbash told Al Jazeera.

He fled his home village of Yalta outside Mariupol on February 25, and said that the colleagues who stayed were tortured as the occupiers tried to “convince” them to switch sides.

This year, the number of turncoats is said to be so small that they can aim for the top jobs they are barely qualified for.

“Russia has a problem here, it can’t form full-fledged civilian administrations on occupied territories,” Tyshkevich said.

While Kherson “governor” Saldo is exceptionally experienced, others are a motley crew of rookies.

Saldo’s deputy is Kirill Stremousov, a communist blogger with a penchant for esoteric conspiracy theories.

Yevgeny Balitsky, a leading “official” in the Russia-occupied part of the Zaporizhia region, was a member of a pro-Moscow party, but never held any significant posts.

“He can’t steal, he can’t stand guard,” political analyst Alexander Kochetkov, who knew Balitsky, wrote in an op-ed citing a proverb that characterises useless people.

And Russia does not always shower collaborators with praise and money.

Mayor Hennadiy Matsehora surrendered his town of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region on February 27, becoming the first known collaborator.

On Thursday, Russians detained him.

“For the occupants, this is systemic. First, they use the traitors and their resources, and then they remove them,” Kharkiv governor Oleh Synehubov said in televised remarks, adding that the Russians had not explained why Matsehora was held.

This pattern of “removal” began after the separatist revolts in 2014.

Gennady Tsyplakov, a deposed “prime minister” of the so-called “People’s Republic” of Luhansk, allegedly “committed suicide” in a pre-trial detention centre in September 2016 after being accused of a coup.

Three weeks later, outspoken Russian warlord Arsen Pavlov, nicknamed Motorola, died in an explosion in the elevator of his apartment building in Donetsk.

A fugitive separatist claimed Pavlov was killed by fellow rebels, who accused Ukrainian intelligence of organising the murder.

Ukraine targets Russia-backed officials

Kyiv does not just charge the turncoats with treason in absentia; Russia-backed officials are also being attacked.

At least five collaborators have been killed – blown up in their cars or apartments, or shot dead – and three more wounded, according to Ukrainian officials and media.

These days, “governor” Saldo moves around “armed, with bodyguards”, a Kherson resident told Al Jazeera.

In mid-June, he said in a video that a news report about his death in a car bomb was a “lie”.

While Saldo survived that bomb blast, another Russia-appointed official in Kherson, Dmitry Savluchenko, head of the families, youth, and sports department, was killed.

On March 20, two unidentified men in black shot dead his assistant Vladimir Slobodchikov in his white Mercedes right next to Saldo’s house.

A month later, Valerii Kuleshov, who was putting together a pro-Russian police force in Kherson, was gunned down near a garbage dump.

And similar incidents have taken place in other areas of Ukraine taken over by Russia.

“He collaborated with orcs,” Anton Herashchenko, an aide to Ukraine’s interior minister, said on Telegram regarding Kuleshov, using a derogatory term to describe Russian invaders.

On Monday, Kherson’s Russia-appointed administration claimed that a makeshift explosive device was removed from a road Saldo’s car was supposed to drive on.

Related Posts

Ghana patients in danger as nurses head for UK – medics

Ghana patients in danger as nurses head for UK – medics

June 6, 2023
0
Bola Tinubu: Nigeria swears in new president

Bola Tinubu: Nigeria swears in new president

May 29, 2023
0
Source: Mansur Mirovalev
Via: Aljazeera
Tags: attacks those who collaborate with RussiaUkraine investigates
Previous Post

iPhone 14 could cost $100 more than iPhone 13

Next Post

Bodies of 17 people recovered after Nigeria boat accident

Related Posts

Ghana patients in danger as nurses head for UK – medics
Foreign

Ghana patients in danger as nurses head for UK – medics

June 6, 2023
0
Bola Tinubu: Nigeria swears in new president
Foreign

Bola Tinubu: Nigeria swears in new president

May 29, 2023
0
Ukraine war: General Kyrylo Budanov promises revenge after latest Kyiv attack
Foreign

Ukraine war: General Kyrylo Budanov promises revenge after latest Kyiv attack

May 29, 2023
1
Mauricio Pochettino: Chelsea appoint ex-Tottenham boss as new manager
Foreign

Mauricio Pochettino: Chelsea appoint ex-Tottenham boss as new manager

May 29, 2023
0
Saudi Arabia and Canada restore diplomatic relations, ending 2018 rift
Foreign

Saudi Arabia and Canada restore diplomatic relations, ending 2018 rift

May 24, 2023
0
Man City celebrate title with win over Chelsea
Foreign

Man City celebrate title with win over Chelsea

May 22, 2023
2
Next Post
Bodies of 17 people recovered after Nigeria boat accident

Bodies of 17 people recovered after Nigeria boat accident

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

BROWSE BY CATEGORIES

  • Business
  • Education
  • Entertainment
  • Foreign
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Politics
  • Sports
  • Technology
  • Uncategorized

BROWSE BY TOPICS

2022 Budget Afghanistan akufo addo Amazon Apiate explosion apple AT&T Black Stars covid COVID-19 COVID 19 E-Levy facebook Fuel Ghana Police Service Google Government health Intel iphone Mahama Majority Microsoft Minority momo NDC news NLC NPP Nvidia OMICRON Parliament police Russia security South Africa Taliban tech Tesla twitter US UTAG vaccine vaccines Xinjiang

Recent Posts

  • Your government is living a champagne life on an akpeteshie budget – Ato Forson slams Akufo-Addo
  • Anthrax outbreak: Authorities ban sale, consumption of cattle in Upper East Region
  • Parliament assures to pass Intestate Succession Bill
  • NDC primaries: Loss of 17 NDC MPs unfortunate – Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu
  • Suame interchange project to start in August – Urban Roads director

Recent Comments

No comments to show.

RECENT NEWS

  • Your government is living a champagne life on an akpeteshie budget – Ato Forson slams Akufo-Addo June 7, 2023
  • Anthrax outbreak: Authorities ban sale, consumption of cattle in Upper East Region June 7, 2023
  • Parliament assures to pass Intestate Succession Bill June 7, 2023
  • NDC primaries: Loss of 17 NDC MPs unfortunate – Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu June 7, 2023

MAIN CATEGORIES

  • Business
  • Education
  • Entertainment
  • Foreign
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Politics
  • Sports
  • Technology
  • Uncategorized

Entertainment

Anthrax outbreak: Authorities ban sale, consumption of cattle in Upper East Region
Health

Anthrax outbreak: Authorities ban sale, consumption of cattle in Upper East Region

12 hours ago
0
  • ABOUT US
  • CONTACT
  • ADVERTISE

© 2023 Top Media Group - Powered by BackUp Data Systems

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Politics
  • News
  • Business
  • Health
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • Lifestyle
  • Education
  • Opinion

© 2023 Top Media Group - Powered by BackUp Data Systems

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In