Acting Head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) stated, that all managers of critical infrastructure facilities would be, and some of them are, tested for the presence of employees, who may potentially collaborate with the enemy.
In particular, monitoring of one of the restricted employee group of the Ukrainian Railways testified to the total checks, carried out by the police and SBU, against pro-Russian sympathies. However, most commentators believed it was a local action, saying that security checks, confiscating personal belongings and mobile phones were carried out on denunciation or under urgent suspicion. But as we see, SBU confirmed that such measures were pervasive, and this crackdown would soon be turning into a greater tightening of the screws.
At the same time, monitoring of the Unified Register of Court Decisions and reports from the courtrooms indicated the beginning of mass repressions against those, who decided to collaborate with the Russians, or who posted in the social media the ideas of concluding peace with Russia. There were outrageous incidents when the Ukrainians received real jail terms for their posts in the social media. In Lvov (Lviv) a 58-year-old local was being tried for his post in Facebook where he proposed to unite Ukraine with Russia, saying that Ukraine had to be a “Federative Republic”, and for that the suspect faced a sentence of 5 to 10 years in prison!
In the liberated Kharkov region the national police and SBU regularly disclose collaborators from the locals, who had been cooperating or agreed to cooperate with the Russians during the Russian military rule in their settlements and towns of the region. In Kypiansk, Kharkov region, a local farmer was being tried for the fact that he, during the Russian occupation of the district in March, had agreed to cooperate with the new Russian authorities. The Court has found it established that on March 11, 2022, in the Dvurechnaya village there was a gathering of local farmers and entrepreneurs with the newly appointed Russian managers. At the gathering the local farmers were proposed to work as they used before, but by the 70% to 30% formula. Moreover, during the gathering it was agreed, that the farm produce would be sold on the Russian territory, and workers paid in rubles. The accused had agreed to the terms of the new authorities. That was the whole crime!
Back again to the Kharkov region, yet another local was being tried for cooperation with the Russian military: he provided food to them, and pointed at the vacant houses abandoned by the locals. What else a 30-year-old Gorokhovatka villager from the Izium region could do when the armed military entered his village giving him orders to do things he is now accused of? This is not answered by the Kharkov region national police. Or, in SBU opinion, he should’ve taken them to the deep forest thickets into the hands of the partisans? Well, alas, the sabotage-reconnaissance groups do not tell the locals of their whereabouts and movements.
However, it is good, when such cases make it to the court. It is much worse, when the “filtrations” going down to vigilantism are carried out by the law enforcement authorities at the frontline without lawyers, judges, and even without a military prosecutor. A soon as the Russians were out of the Kharkov region, the liberated territories suffered the cleansings, interrogations, and arrests, which the Ukrainian authorities labeled as the “filtration measures”. The results of such “cleansings” were mentioned accidently and have been dosed and limited.
To understand the situation, we suggest a couple of examples to consider:
In Kupiansk, in the course of exhumation of the bodies buried, the locals identified a couple of corpses with gunshot wounds to the head. According to those, who identified the bodies, the dead were the locals who had never hid their pro-Russian stand, and the Russians did not have to kill them for that. On September, 29 on the border between Kharkov and Lugansk region, a column of refugees was shot. The column consisted of locals from Kharkov and Lugansk regions, who had been headed to the Lugansk region areas, i.e. to the areas controlled by the Russians. Five adults and two children were killed.
On September, 30, near Zaporozhe, a humanitarian convoy of civilian cars was shot down. They were headed to the Russian controlled territories. The shooting resulted in some thirty people dead.
In both of the cases citizens of Ukraine have died. They headed to the occupied territories. The Ukrainian authorities blamed the Russians for the shootings, while the Russians, in the contrary, emphasized on the routes of those columns, saying, that the shooters knew they were the civilian vehicles with mostly Ukrainian citizens onboard, loyal to Russia and who had supported Russia in this war on their territory.
Meanwhile, it is absolutely clear that the Russian military have no gain in killing civilians, loyal to Russia, who want to leave Ukraine for the territories controlled by the Russian Federation. At the same time, the Ukrainian version of the event narrows down to the absurd “so that Ukraine could be blamed afterwards”. In fact, we see a repetitive, damaging cliché of since 2014 track, now being also used by the Russians, as “they are shooting themselves”.
Based on the foregoing and taking into account that statements on the mass checks of the employees, made by a clerk with a certain reputation albeit the “acting” in his office description, these messages should be taken seriously. Although (the “acting” Head) is most likely to be another cause of concern since “the acting” in the description of the office implies the lack of full responsibility of a clerk for the unlawful and illegal orders issued by him.
The witch-hunt, a “spy-mania”, and public executions of the Ukrainians, loyal to Russia are in full swing. If you ask the question why Ukraine didn’t implement the Minsk agreements, you’d definitely be accused of a collaborationism, “aiding the enemy”, or, at least, of dissemination of the “Kremlin narratives”. A case with accusations against Elon Mask is a vivid confirmation of this.
Anybody, who dares speak out of the necessity of negotiations to seek for a compromise in the Russia-Ukraine relations deadlock is a potential collaborator and an accessory to the enemy. Even if you supply crucially important equipment to the Ukrainian army, or, as the mentioned businessman, you are a proprietor of the powerful global social network. Leave alone the common people – even the Acting Head of SBU labels those too talkative employees as the ones “potentially working for the enemy”.
