47. The Bakanov Case

Almost immediately after his inauguration in May 2019, President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed his childhood friend Ivan Bakanov as the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). If you remember, Vanya (Ivan) and Vova (Volodymyr) not only studied in the same school but even lived in the same entrance of an apartment building in Kryvyi Rih.

This appointment was purely a political decision − the head of the state wanted to see someone he could trust in such a key position. Although Bakanov had no experience in law enforcement or public service, society accepted this appointment calmly. If a stage comedian could become president, then his personnel appointments certainly wouldn’t surprise anyone. Moreover, Ivan Bakanov hadn’t made a spectacle of himself on stage but worked for Zelensky as the director of “Kvartal 95”. And in general, he looked like a calm and intelligent person with glasses.

In 2005, Yulia Tymoshenko, during her first premiership, lobbied for her close associate Olexandr Turchynov to be appointed as the head of the SBU. He, too, had no experience in law enforcement at the time. But Turchynov proved quite successful in the position of the head of the Security Service, with no scandals occurring under his watch. Nine years later, after Yanukovych fled, Turchynov even served as the acting president.

Unlike Turchynov, Ivan Bakanov’s leadership of the SBU turned out to be a real disaster for Ukraine. The people he appointed were not just unprofessional or corrupt − he placed a Russian agent, Oleh Kulynych, in one of the leading positions in the SBU, who passed all the secret information to Moscow and sabotaged the work of the Ukrainian special service.

According to journalist Yuriy Butusov, it’s likely that Bakanov received a large bribe for appointing Kulynych as the head of the SBU’s Crimean Department (this department was based in Kherson but was responsible for intelligence activities in Crimea occupied by Russians). According to formal procedure, Kulynych was appointed to this position by a decree from Zelensky, but his candidacy was submitted for the president’s consideration by the head of the SBU, Ivan Bakanov.

It’s hard to explain the appointment of Andriy Naumov as the head of the SBU’s Internal Security Department by anything other than corruption, especially since he fled the country with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash the day before the war started.

To spare readers unnecessary details, let me explain the consequences of Bakanov’s actions as succinctly as possible. Oleh Kulynych, from the moment of his appointment in June 2019 until the start of the war, sabotaged the SBU’s agent activities in Crimea and regularly leaked secret information to Moscow via the Threema messenger. Additionally, he misled the leadership and lobbied for the appointment of other Russian agents to positions in the SBU. Likely, Kulynych’s reports, in which he denied the preparation of Russian troops in Crimea for an attack on Kherson region, influenced Zelensky.

After the war began, Oleh Kulynych immediately left Kherson for Kyiv and for some time was the assistant to the head of the SBU, Ivan Bakanov, for especially important assignments. In the summer of 2022, he was arrested. The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) has a large number of audio recordings of Kulynych’s conversations with Volodymyr Sivkovich − a former ally of Yanukovych who has been living in Moscow since 2014 and working for the FSB.

How did this Russian agent appear and manage to hold such a high position in the SBU? Oleh Kulynych was born in 1969 in Smila, Cherkasy region. From 1989 to 1994, he studied at the Higher School of the KGB of the USSR, later renamed the FSB Academy of Russia, and even served in the Federal Counterintelligence Service of the RF for some time. In 1994, Kulynych returned to Ukraine and worked in the Security Service of Ukraine until 2006.

According to the lustration law adopted under President Poroshenko, it is prohibited in Ukraine to appoint people who served in Russian special services after 1991 to public positions. However, this direct prohibition was ignored not only by Bakanov, who submitted Kulynych’s candidacy for the president’s consideration, but also by Zelensky, who signed the decree on the appointment. They both violated the law, and their actions led to severe consequences for the state’s defense capability.

Another interesting detail about the Russian agent Oleh Kulynych is that after leaving the SBU in 2006, he became the head of one of the enterprises of the state company “Energoatom,” which was led by Andriy Derkach at the time. Yes, the same Derkach who in 2020 took an active part in discrediting the candidate for the President of the USA, Joe Biden, and was then sanctioned by the US. Andriy Derkach also studied at the FSB academy in Moscow, simultaneously with Oleh Kulynych.

According to the State Bureau of Investigation, after his appointment in Kherson, Kulynych had access to all the secret information circulating in the Security Service of Ukraine. He received up-to-date information about what was discussed at meetings and what was happening in the state. Kulynych passed all the received information to Sivkovich through the internet messenger, using code names and titles for conspiracy.

As for Andriy Naumov, another traitor appointed by Zelensky upon Bakanov’s recommendation, his story is somewhat different. Naumov had no relation to the special services before his appointment to the SBU. He worked for a while in the Prosecutor General’s Office, where he was responsible for material and technical supply, then moved to work at the State Enterprise for managing the Chernobyl zone. And almost immediately after Zelensky’s victory, this man was appointed the head of the SBU’s Main Directorate of Internal Security. A year later, the president appointed Naumov as the first deputy chairman of the SBU and gave him the first ever new military rank in Ukraine’s history – SBU brigadier general. This rank was invented to transition to NATO standards. And the first to be awarded according to this standard was the future traitor.

As it turned out, Naumov’s appointment was lobbied by Kulynych. It was important for the Russians to remove the first deputy head of the SBU, Ruslan Baranetsky − a renowned counterintelligence officer with considerable experience against Russia. And, of course, with Bakanov’s support, Kulynych succeeded. On July 24, 2021, Baranetsky was dismissed, and Naumov was appointed in his place.

Currently, Ukrainian investigators have no evidence that Andriy Naumov was a Russian agent. As Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov believes, Naumov’s rapid career ascent is explained by the fact that he managed smuggling at customs and was Ivan Bakanov’s “wallet.” A part of the money from the import or export of goods into/out of Ukraine without paying state duty went to the “black fund.” Then these funds went to support Zelensky’s party and other operations, with a portion of the money taken by the scheme’s participants and their patrons.

On February 23, 2022, a few hours before the Russian invasion, Andriy Naumov left Ukraine by car. After fleeing, he lived in Germany for several months. Then Naumov managed to leave the European Union for Serbia. All this time, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office showed no interest in issuing an international search warrant for Naumov. On June 7, 2022, Naumov was detained in Serbia when crossing the border with North Macedonia.

In the BMW car, from which he tried to leave Serbia, they found 600,000 euros in cash, 125,000 US dollars, and precious stones, including diamonds. Along with Naumov in the car was a Ukrainian entrepreneur, German citizen Alexander Akst, a subject of several journalistic investigations related to cigarette smuggling from Ukraine to the EU. On October 6, 2023, a Serbian court sentenced Andriy Naumov to one year in prison for money laundering.

Oleh Kulynych was arrested by the SBI together with the SBU on July 16, 2022. The Russian agent was caught in correspondence. Most likely, the “super-secure” messenger Threema, in which he corresponded with Sivkovich, was hacked by American intelligence services, or the program developers provided them with a backdoor. Then the Americans passed the information about Kulynych to their Ukrainian colleagues.

Audio evidence was added to the criminal case in an original way: the SBI claimed that the conversations between Sivkovich and Kulynych were discovered on a flash drive found during a search in a house in Kyiv at Peredova Street 5, “on the third floor in an apartment where no one lived.” According to the SBI, the conversations with Kulynych were recorded on his iPhone by Sivkovich himself. But how the audio recordings of conversations ended up in a Kyiv apartment, no one can explain.

Law enforcement also found a hard drive in Kulynych’s car containing 7 audio files, identical to those found in the empty apartment.

In court, Kulynych acknowledged the authenticity of the files on the flash drive. But he and his lawyers claim that communication with Sivkovich was supposedly aimed at obtaining valuable agent data for Ukraine.

The scandal with Kulynych’s arrest led to Zelensky no longer being able to keep his childhood friend in this position. Especially during the war. On July 17, 2022, the president suspended Bakanov from leading the SBU for “non-performance (improper performance) of official duties, which led to human casualties or other severe consequences, or created a threat of such consequences.” Two days later, the Verkhovna Rada approved his dismissal.

After Ivan Bakanov’s dismissal, he was never called in for questioning by an investigator, although his testimony could have provided a lot of valuable information in the Kulynych case. Moreover, Bakanov simply disappeared for several months in an unknown direction. Exactly a year after his dismissal, on July 19, 2023, he posted a fresh photo from Poltava on social networks and reported receiving a lawyer’s certificate in Poltava region.

According to Ukrainian law, a lawyer can be prosecuted only with the consent of the regional prosecutor or the Prosecutor General or his deputy. By obtaining the status of a lawyer, Ivan Bakanov shielded himself from the risk of arrest by the president-uncontrolled National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Such a situation could very well occur if Naumov in Serbia suddenly starts giving testimonies about customs smuggling.

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