Ukraine War Day #407: Belorussia A Nest Of Spies

Dear Readers:

As the Russian people brace for new terror attacks, the Belorussian KGB has its hands full tracking pro-Western spies and terror cells. It’s like a game of whack-a-mole out there. To help explain what is going on, I have this piece by reporter Andrei Rezchikov. The headline reads:

Kiev Recruits Chopped Meat From The Russian And Belorussian Opposition

It would be funnier if they said “chopped liver”, but I have to go with what they have.

The lead: The arrest, in the Belorussian city of Grodno, of two men, a Russian citizen named Alexei Kulikov, and a Belorussian citizen named Vadim Patsenko. According to the Belorussian KGB, the two men were recruited by Ukrainian secret services and assigned to gather information on strategic military objects which the Ukrainians planned to blow up.

One of the detained: Alexei Kulikov

According to the KGB, the connecting nexus is the Russian political Opposition, which acts as the milieu (or maybe one could call it the glue) within which potential agents are spotted, picked from the herd, groomed, and recruited to serve the Ukrainian government.

Both Kulikov and Patsenko were allegedly recruited by the same Russian Oppositionist, a man named Daniil Krinari, who is also known by the name Kovalensky. But all of them, including Krinari, report upwards to a functionary within the Ukrainian secret services, who is named as a certain Vyacheslav Rozum. In other words, Rozum is an international spymaster who runs networks formed out of Russian and Belorussian ideologically motivated persons. Their desire is to help Ukraine win the war and overthrow the Russian government.

One of the detained, Alexei Kulikov, fled from Russia when the SMO started. Presumably to evade the draft, but more likely, he was not so much fearful of serving, as just opposed to the war on principle, being pro-Ukrainian and all. [yalensis: I don’t think he could be called a coward if he was willing to enlist as a spy, that’s a very dangerous profession!]

Potential terror targets in Grodno

Russian media say that Krinari was recruited by the Ukrainian SBU and given the assignment of building a spy network within Russia. That led to him recruiting Kulikov, Patsenko, and who knows how many others. But then, unfortunately for them, they were busted by the Belorussian KGB. Krinari was extradited back to Russia, but the other two are still in Belorussian custody, where they continue to be interrogated, often on-camera for the viewing entertainment of the public.

In the course of his interrogation, Kulikov declared the following: “Vyacheslav [Rozum] gave us instructions to reconnoiter certain objects.” Kulikov’s job was to snap photographs and make videos. For example: a military recruiting station in Grodno; a military unit housing; an oil refining facility; the Russian Consulate, etc.

Vadim Patsenko

In his interrogation, Patsenko appears to be on very chummy terms with his handler, because he refers to him by his endearing nickname Slava instead of Vyacheslav: “The Ukrainian spy Slava gave me the task of blowing up the oil facility, with the help of a drone and some explosives. He had worked out a plan…”

According to Belorussian journalists researching this story, Kulikov and Patsenko were promised $10,000 dollars and then would be whisked to safety abroad, as their reward for blowing up the oil facility. But in the end, they were double-crossed and abandoned by their Ukrainian handlers.

Meanwhile, Belorussian President Lukashenko met with Russia’s chief spy-master Sergei Naryshkin, to discuss the situation. Lukashenko was shocked when his guys busted the network and he discovered they had up to 30 local (ethnic Belorussian) agents recruited to the network. “Where do these guys come from?” Batka exclaimed. “These people are bastards (сволочи).” Lukashenko finds it hard to believe that foreign terrorists can just waltz into Belorussia and recruit so many willing “bastards” at the drop of a hat. And yet that is only the tip of the iceberg: Belorussian KGB chief Ivan Tertel reports that he has his hands full every day detaining citizens of Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics, these spies are swarming all over the place and organizing terrorist networks inside his country.

Ivan Tertel: “We are not amused!”

So many Ukrainian spies have been detained, that the Ukrainian government tried to work out a prisoner swap with Minsk. But Tertel is not interested. He says the Belorussian citizens being held in Ukrainian prisons are not exactly high-quality people: “Drug addicts and rapists, that’s who they have over there, serving out their sentences.”

In the next section of this story, Belorussian Military Expert Alexander Alesin helps to explain what is going on: “The Ukrainian secret services have the benefit of many significant opportunities on the territory of Belorussia and Russia. After the events of 2020 [yalensis: political protests in Russia trying to overthrow Putin, as usual] many of the participants of those protests went quiet, but they did not change their positions. A portion of them emigrated abroad and became a subject of interest to Polish and Ukrainian secret services.”

[to be continued]