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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

WILL THOSE IN POWER RESIST THE TEMPTATION?

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

As was expected, cadre changes continue in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). UNIAN reports that General Yuri Zemliansky has been appointed First Deputy Head. Previously he headed the Luhansk Regional SBU Directorate and now succeeds Oleksandr Skibinetsky who will continue to work with ex-SBU chief Volodymyr Radchenko. UNIAN says both will be on the Intelligence Committee under the President of Ukraine.

After Volodymyr Radchenko parted company with SBU, becoming First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC), NSDC Secretary Volodymyr Horbulin made no mention of the Intelligence Committee (IC). His ambiguous comment was that “the First Deputy will be working with coercive structures.” One of the reasons may be that Intelligence Committee members want to avoid unnecessary publicity. IC was founded in 1993 and its Chairman was supposed to be a kind of orchestra conductor responsible for the harmonious performance of Ukrainian special services: the SBU Intelligence Department, Defense Ministry’s Chief Intelligence Directorate, Border Guard Troops Intelligence Service, Interior Ministry’s Criminal Intelligence, and several other clandestine agencies. In other words, his job is to see that the cloak-and-dagger boys do not get in each other’s way. Formally, IC is to determine the priorities for foreign intelligence branches of various secret services, coordinating and assessing their intelligence.

All this makes the IC Chairman an influential figure and outwardly contradicts the allegation that Mr. Radchenko’s transfer from SBU to NSDC is a demotion, even exile, and that it happened because he took jealous care of the Service, blocking every attempt to get it involved in domestic political shoot-outs. The secret police may serve democracy or turn into a general purpose repressive machine; it is but a short step from noble goals to evil practice. The latter allegedly did not meet with Mr. Radchenko’s approval. He was even quoted as saying that collecting compromising information or documents is immoral, and that this is a road leading nowhere. Incidentally, similar statements are known to have been made by ranking military intelligence officers (although secret police and military intelligence are traditional rivals and there seemed little sense in getting the military involved politically), adding, that “all our work is done outside Ukraine and one will not find a single country in which foreign intelligence has to deal with domestic problems.”

Moreover, military intelligence favored a cardinal step: detaching the intelligence branch from the SBU, making it a separate structure. To this Mr. Radchenko replied, “You can divide anything... If we start dividing now each will be left with something incomplete, ineffective, and the whole structure will fall to pieces.” It is possible that the SBU regarded the military’s idea of splitting it up as a foul scheme to enhance their own position, taking the lead in the intelligence domain, thus getting priority in informing the political leadership. The more so that the situation in the country has made the SBU’s position rather unstable, with the same official heading the Defense Ministry’s Chief Intelligence Directorate and the Intelligence Committee.

Now, with the IC under his command, Mr. Radchenko probably recalls past “arrangements” and feels sorry no changes were made while he was still there. The thing is that despite the IC’s theoretically getting broader jurisdiction over all clandestine agencies, the SBU’s intelligence branch remains the most “autonomous” and “independent,” including financially. Last year, the Ukrainian Parliament for the first time since independence approved a separate state budget expense item to finance secret services. In other words, the latter are financed not from the budgets of relevant agencies but via a single coordinating body, the Intelligence Committee which has thus considerably altered its status. Few if any have noticed something which is of principal importance here. The consolidated intelligence budget, originally estimated at Hr 58 million never included an SBU expense item. It is still subsidized through its own agency, not the Committee. This happened with certain lobbying for the SBU, particularly its intelligence branch, by legislators in uniform from the same department.

Thus, Mr. Radchenko will be in a position now to pull rank in the foreign intelligence realm. Pessimistic analysts consider that SBU’s powerful intelligence branch may, at a time of presidential negotiations, deal not only with external factors. Passing a bill on foreign intelligence would effectively block this temptation (and the need to have such a law has been discussed for a number of years). The law must clearly define, in black and white, as in all civilized truly democratic countries, the jurisdiction of every clandestine agency. Otherwise the good old Stalinist maxim, “cadres decide everything,” will still hold true. In the case of General Yuri Zemliansky from Luhansk Oblast, his head-spinning promotion calls for reciprocation on his part, especially considering that, like his predecessor Oleksandr Skibinetsky, he will be entrusted with SBU’s intelligence branch.

Any power (especially one as shaky and ineffective as in Ukraine) can be tempted to apply the military and clandestine agencies to serve its ends. The question is, will Ukrainian professionals obey orders contradicting their professional duty?

 

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