'We work on the same assembly line,’ KGB’s Vladimir Yakunin said of Dugin in an interview
Notes of a former KGB lieutenant colonel: "Gifts of the Magi" as an active measure of the Russian special services in Ukraine
The Gifts of the Magi were exhibited at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra in January 2014.
Photo: churchs.kiev.ua
One of the authors of the book "The KGB Plays Chess" and a former employee of the USSR State Security Committee, Vladimir Popov, recently completed work on his memoirs. In the book "A Conspiracy of Scoundrels. Notes of a Former KGB Lieutenant Colonel," he talks about the formation of the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin, his associates, about his work in the committee, and the main events in which the Soviet special services were involved. The book has not been published before. With the consent of the author, the GORDON publication is exclusively publishing chapters from it. In this part, Popov writes about Russian monarchists and their role in the Ukrainian events of early 2014.
In 2006, the board of trustees of the Andrei Pervozvanny Foundation was headed by the president of Russian Railways (RZD), Vladimir Yakunin. Yakunin is the informal leader of the "Orthodox Chekists", who are gradually increasing their influence in Russia. Like Gazprom, Russian Railways is a kind of state within a state, with 1.3 million employees, its own media empire, a budget of 1.3 trillion rubles and 30,000 armed police officers.
In his 2006 book The Russian School of Geopolitics, Yakunin refers to Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin eight times. He is also listed as the editor of two anthologies of Dugin published by Yakunin's Center for Problem Analysis and State Management Design.
Speaking about Dugin's seminar "Russia and the West" held at the center, Yakunin pointed out what he believes to be the main value of Dugin's approach: he sees the fundamental conflict of the modern era not in the struggle for energy sources or for economic dominance, but in the clash of civilizations.
This idea of a civilizational divide haunts Yakunin, who controls at least three non-profit organizations (including the Center for National Glory) that promote the values of Russian Orthodoxy, Russian history, and ties to the Slavic world.
Since 2004, Yakunin has held annual congresses of Russian conservatives – church and state figures – called "Dialogue of Civilizations" at an Orthodox monastery on the island of Rhodes. Dugin almost always takes part in these congresses. "We work on the same assembly line," Yakunin said of Dugin in an interview.
Vladimir Yakunin.Photo: Yury Golovin / wikipedia.org
Yakunin was born on June 30, 1948 in the city of Melenki, Vladimir Region. In 1972, he graduated from the Leningrad Mechanical Institute with a degree in Aircraft Production.
Then he was enrolled in the 101st school, which trained Soviet intelligence officers (after the death of Yuri Andropov, it received the status of an institute named after him). After completing two years of training, Yakunin was sent to the 1st Department of the KGB of the USSR in the Leningrad Region.
He worked under the cover of an engineer, senior engineer of the Department of the State Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR for Foreign Economic Relations, head of the department of the Abram Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Yakunin's activities at that time belonged to the sphere of interests of the Department of ''T'' (scientific and technical intelligence) of the PGU KGB of the USSR.
In 1985, he was recruited into the central apparatus of Soviet intelligence and, under diplomatic cover, was sent on a foreign mission to the United States, where he served as secretary of the USSR's permanent representative to the UN.
In early 1991, Yakunin returned to Leningrad. And already in April 1991, together with a group of friends, he created a company for attracting foreign investments - JSC " International Center for Business Cooperation ". In addition, he joined the board of directors of the Rossiya Bank, owned by brothers Mikhail and Yuri Kovalchuk. This bank was created, in part, with money from the CPSU.
In 1991, the Leningrad Regional Committee of the Party, which participated, like all the leading bodies of the CPSU, in pushing funds into various structures that were outwardly unrelated to the party, transferred a deposit to the bank for a very considerable amount for those years - 50 million rubles.
In addition, Yakunin was a member of the board of directors of the Baltic Shipping Company and the Europe Hotel. State Duma deputy Gennady Gudkov, a former officer of the 2nd KGB Service in Moscow and the Moscow Region, said in an interview about Yakunin that "Yakunin never went into business," but "worked "under the roof," engaged in security."
However, Yakunin was not only involved in security during the "dangerous 1990s." In 1992, the Stream corporation he headed found itself at the center of a parliamentary investigation related to the "misuse of budget funds allocated by the federal government." Along with Yakunin, Vladimir Putin, Yuri Kovalchuk, and Vladimir Kumarin (Barsukov), one of the leaders of the so-called Tambov OZU, who was also a good friend of Putin, were involved in that scandal.
In June 2008, during the detention of several Russian citizens by the police in Spain, the media's attention was again drawn to earlier publications devoted to Putin's connections in the 1990s with the head of the Tambov OZU, Kumarin, who was arrested in August 2007 on charges of leading this criminal group and subsequently convicted. It is worth noting that the practice of "misusing federal government budget funds" would be used by Yakunin throughout his career in Russian state structures.
At the same time, facts became public knowledge indicating the illegal acquisition by a group of leaders of the St. Petersburg City Hall and big businessmen of dachas in a village adjacent to Komsomolskoye Lake, and their creation of the dacha cooperative "Ozero". Among the lucky owners of elite land plots on the shores of the beautiful lake and neighbors in dachas were Yakunin, Putin, Yuri and Mikhail Kovalchuk.
In August 1996, Putin was transferred to Moscow to work as Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration. On March 26, 1997, he was appointed Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Russia - Head of the Main Control Department of the President of the Russian Federation. Almost immediately after this, Yakunin was appointed Head of the North-Western District Inspectorate of the Main Control Department of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation.
Vladimir Yakunin andVladimir Putin. Photo: navalny.com
In July 1997, Yakunin received a report from Vasily Kabachinov, the chief controller and auditor of the Control and Audit Department of the Russian Ministry of Finance. On eight pages, the auditor detailed the illegal operations of the management, in whose financial successes Putin, the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, and his subordinate Dmitry Medvedev were directly involved.
At the end of the audit report, it was indicated that the construction and financial corporation " Twenty Trust" owed the budget of St. Petersburg an amount of 28 billion 455 million 700 thousand rubles. "Informing about the above, we are sending inspection materials for an investigation within your competence," Kabachinov wrote.
There was no investigation, and in October 2000, six months after Putin was elected President of Russia, Yakunin was appointed Deputy Minister of Transport of the country, and four and a half months later he became the head of JSC " Russian Railways ".
In September 2016, Colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko, deputy head of Department "T" of the Main Department for Economic Security and Anti-Corruption (GUEBiPK) of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, was arrested and is still under investigation . Zakharchenko was charged with receiving a bribe of 7 million rubles.
During a search of Zakharchenko's half-sister's apartment, a room with a metal entrance door was discovered, which had to be opened with special equipment. There was money in the room: $120 million in bank packages and €2 million. The total weight of the currency was 1,200 kg. Zakharchenko could not explain the origin of this money. He also could not explain where $300 million came from to the accounts of his relatives in Switzerland, and another $16 million to the accounts of his friend in several Moscow banks.
During the investigation, it was established that this money was accumulated by Zakharchenko through businessmen who "sat" on contracts with Russian Railways and Yakunin's "subsidiary" structures of Russian Railways. Zakharchenko was a full partner of the people who received contracts from Russian Railways.
On March 5, 2013, Yakunin, as the chairman of the board of trustees of the Andrew the First-Called Foundation and the Center for National Glory, registered the "Istoky" trust fund. The aforementioned Sergey Scheblygin was appointed director of the "Istoky" fund. In terms of the amount of trust capital generated, the fund quickly became one of the five largest in Russia, and Yakunin and Scheblygin were awarded the highest award of the Jerusalem Orthodox Church - the Order of the Holy Sepulcher.
On July 23, 2013, Yakunin and his wife Natalia founded the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation "endowment" in Geneva. The stated mission of the "endowment" is to support research and preservation of the Russian national heritage, as well as to promote peaceful coexistence between different peoples and religions. Natalia Yakunina became the president of the foundation; Yakunin - vice president. Yakunin's colleague from his past intelligence activities - professional intelligence officer Mikhail Ilyich Yakushev - also joined the board of the Swiss structure.
Mykhailo Yakushev
Since 2004, Yakushev has been listed as the first vice-president of the Andrew the First-Called Foundation and the Center for National Glory. Information about him in open sources, as is customary for people of this profession, is extremely scarce. The website of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society turned out to be the most reliable source of information about the Soviet/Russian intelligence officer and reported the following about Yakushev:
Mikhail Ilyich Yakushev – Candidate of Historical Sciences, Orientalist historian, Arabist, Ottomanist, translator of the highest level of Arabic. Graduate of the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University. Worked in the diplomatic field in Tunisia and Israel. Author of over 30 scientific and popular science works on the history of Eastern Orthodoxy and Russian political, diplomatic and spiritual presence in the Ottoman Empire. Laureate of the Prize in Memory of Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna Makariy (Bulgakov). Full member of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society.
And now in more detail. Yakushev was born on November 26, 1959. He studied at secondary school No. 5 in the city of Dolgoprudny in the Moscow region. He graduated from the Mikhail Lomonosov Moscow State University (Institute of Asian and African Countries). After completing his education at the university, he was enrolled in the 101st school (the future Yuri Andropov Institute of the KGB), which is an educational institution of Soviet/Russian foreign intelligence. Usually, after receiving higher education, proven state security agents and children of the Soviet party elite were enrolled there. Yakushev's relatives were not among the latter.
Mikhail Yakushev. Photo: menswork.ru
In 1988, Yakushev was sent on a foreign mission under diplomatic cover to the USSR Embassy in Tunisia. From 1994 to 1999, he worked as First Secretary of the Russian Embassy in Israel, then as an advisor to the Russian Foreign Ministry. From May 2002 to April 2003, Yakushev was the head of the staff of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs.
In one of his interviews, Yakushev said the following about himself:
"I was the first October student in the class, the first pioneer and the first Komsomol member. In the army, I joined the candidates for members of the CPSU, in 1979 I was accepted into the party. Moreover, in the army I was the head of a circle studying the biography of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin... After the army, on the third attempt, I managed to enter the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University, at the Faculty of History and Philology, and there I very often took the history of the party. For me, the subject "History of the CPSU" was always a very easy subject...
For the first time in Jerusalem... [I found myself] in December 1994. Then I was sent as the first secretary to work at our embassy in Tel Aviv, and from November 15, [19]94 to May 30, [19]99, I served as a diplomat at our embassy. And I was engaged in the service (this was my workload) in connection with the Jerusalem Patriarchate. But this workload became my favorite thing. At that time, Patriarch Diodor was still there, by the way, a recipient of the international prize of St. Andrew the First-Called "For Faith and Fidelity."
...I dealt with issues of Russian real estate. We managed to get a paper from the Foreign Ministry on re-registration from Soviet real estate to Russian in [19]96, before Yevgeny Primakov arrived in October, because the collapse of the Soviet Union was another blow. These are Ukraine's claims, first of all, to a part of this church real estate. In general, the Israelis also thought for a long time about what we should do...
Here, the position of Yasser Arafat (an agent of influence of the KGB of the USSR foreign intelligence service - V. Popov's note), who categorically supported the Moscow Patriarchate, also helped. Perhaps he even took it too harshly, because he had a dispute with his wife Sukha on this issue, because he supported the position of Patriarch Alexy."
"Orthodoxy and Peace" website, April 23, 2013
Basil the Great Foundation and Konstantin Malofeev
"Orthodox oligarch" Konstantin Malofeev became the founder and head of another Orthodox foundation, the Basil the Great Foundation, in January 2007. Zurab Chavchavadze, Malofeev's ideological father and, like Malofeev, a staunch monarchist, became the general director of this foundation.
Similar to the author of the Russian triad "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality" Count Sergei Uvarov, who created gymnasiums in Russia to educate the sovereign's servants, Malofeev created the Orthodox gymnasium of St. Basil the Great, headed by Zurab Chavchavadze. Malofeev's stated goal of creating the gymnasium completely coincided with Uvarov's - to raise the future Russian elite.
Konstantin Malofeev.Photo: mnews.world
Another active figure in the "deep state" and Malofeev's mentor was Vladimir Yakunin, a member of the inner circle of President Putin. Given his closeness to the president, Yakunin had the opportunity, acting in the interests of the "deep state", to indirectly influence Putin's decisions. For his part, Malofeev maintained friendly relations for many years with Igor Shchegolev, who had held the position of head of the press service department, first of the acting president, and then of President Putin, since 2000. Since May 2012, Shchegolev has become an assistant to the president of Russia.
From Chavchavadze's memoirs, we learn a lot about the undeclared goals and spheres of activity of the Basil the Great Foundation, which, together with its organizers, was most actively involved in the preparation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Chavchavadze writes:
''We talked a lot with Igor [Strelkov-Girkin] together with Konstantin Malofeyev, explained our positions, because we needed to cooperate, when Strelkov joined our structure even before the Crimean events, when he came to work at our Basil the Great Foundation. He immediately aroused sympathy in both me and Konstantin, with whom we immediately exchanged our impressions.
We talked with him with interest, discovered a lot in common. We found out that Strelkov is a monarchist, and Konstantin Malofeyev and I are convinced monarchists, as they say, with experience. I have known Konstantin for a very long time, ever since I gave him, a 15-year-old boy, the answer to his letter to Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich. At that time, I was an active participant in the monarchist movement. And against the backdrop of all the quarrels and strife in the monarchist environment, the sincere and pure position of young Kostya simply bribed me. I understood: this is what a real monarchist he is. In short, for me Kostya is a dear person. And here we are saying together with him: what an amazing person Igor Strelkov is!
Here is what journalist Oleg Kashin writes about Malofeev:
"All my interlocutors described Malofeev himself the same way - yes, he is sincerely and seriously obsessed with spirituality, statehood, military history... Back in the 90s, he was an active Orthodox figure in St. Petersburg, communicated with the now deceased Metropolitan John (Sychev), who had a reputation in those years as an open fascist (the closest associate of Metropolitan Konstantin Dushenov, who served time in prison under Article 282, "extremist"), and after the death of the Metropolitan, Malofeev withdrew from church affairs, became friends with Alexander Dugin, then with someone else, and by the beginning of the 10s... turned into the brightest representative of the social group "Orthodox businessmen."
According to people familiar with him, there may be questions about how he earns his money, but there are no questions about how he spends it... A man ready to spend any money to make Russia look like the one "we lost."
Igor Strelkov (Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin) was born on December 17, 1970 in Moscow. He graduated from the Moscow State Historical and Archival Institute. He had a long secret service past as an FSB agent. In this position, he participated in military operations in Transnistria, Bosnia, and Chechnya.
Igor Girkin and Oleksandr Boroday. Photo: ERA
During the Bosnian War, he began collaborating with Alexander Prokhanov's newspaper "Zavtra", where he met Alexander Borodai. Later, they visited various "hot spots" in Russia together and published materials about them in the newspaper "Zavtra".
In 1998, Girkin was enlisted in the Russian FSB as a special services agent, which he positively demonstrated. In 2011, he was an ANNA-News correspondent in Abkhazia. At a press conference on July 10, 2014, he said that he was a colonel in the FSB and resigned on March 31, 2013.
After his discharge from the service in 2013, Girkin, on the recommendation of Boroday, was hired by the investment fund "Marshal-Capital", owned by Malofeev. Boroday and Malofeev, for their part, were connected by a long-standing friendship dating back to their youth. At Malofeev's fund, Boroday was engaged in PR campaigns, and Girkin was entrusted with ensuring security.
Alexander Boroday was born on July 25, 1972 in Moscow. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. He participated in one of the combat groups in the events of September-October 1993 in Moscow on the side of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, at a press conference on July 10, 2014 he stated that he fought in Transnistria. Since the mid-1990s he has been publishing in the newspaper "Zavtra", is engaged in PR and political consulting. At the time of the outbreak of the war in Ukraine he was a PR consultant and headed the Internet TV channel "Den TV".
Strelkov and Boroday were born and raised in Moscow, received a liberal arts education, and had no connection to Donbas. At a press conference on July 10, 2014, Strelkov and Boroday stated that they met in 1996 at the apartment of an acquaintance they did not name. The acquaintance was Olga Kulygina.
Olga Kulygina.Photo: ENOT CORP / YouTube
Olga Kulygina was born on September 14, 1972. She lives with her 77-year-old mother and 19-year-old son in Moscow. In 1989–1994, she studied at the Moscow State Institute of Applied Biotechnology (when she entered, the institute had a different name: the Moscow Technological Institute of Meat and Dairy Industry).
In 2001, she defended her PhD thesis at the same institute on the topic "Hematological and cytogenetic consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident for three species of mouse-like rodents living in the exclusion zone." She worked at Oleg Deripaska's company "Basic Element".
Expert of the World Anti-Crime and Anti-Terrorism Forum, created by former Russian Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov. Journalist of the ANNA news agency, registered in Abkhazia and headed by Marat Musin.
In 2012, this agency sent her to Syria, from where she wrote pro-Assad materials, accusing the rebels of all mortal sins. In October 1993, she participated in the events near the White House in Moscow, was a paramedic in the Ts20 detachment (commander - Colonel Yeremin). Her immediate superior in the White House was Colonel of the medical service Yakushenkov. In 2001, Yakushenkov and Kulygina had a son. Yakushenkov died in 2012, he was 25 years older than Kulygina.
On May 30, 2014 (most likely, it all happened three days earlier) in the area of the Biryukovo checkpoint, Ukrainian border guards detained two Gazelle minibuses traveling from the Russian side. They were met on the Ukrainian side by a Mercedes-Vito. A fight broke out, during which five terrorists were killed, 13 were detained, and one of them was seriously wounded. The vehicles were carrying 28 Kalashnikov assault rifles, six machine guns, four sniper rifles, and three Mukha grenade launchers, as well as 40 boxes of ammunition for these weapons and grenades.
Among the passengers of one of the Gazelles was Kulygina, who was carrying $10,000. She was held for some time in the SBU detention center in Kyiv. Shortly before her arrest, the media published a photo of Kulygina with a Kalashnikov assault rifle in her hands in Slavyansk, which had been captured by pro-Russian extremists led by Strelkov-Girkin.
In addition, her joint photos with Girkin were widely known. In many publications, Kulygin was called his combat girlfriend. Kulygin was introduced to Girkin by Borodai, with whom she had been friends since the days of defending the White House in 1993. Since the same time, she had been acquainted with Sergei Shcheblygin. What united all these people was their hatred of liberal values and their closeness to the Russian special services.
"Gifts of the Magi" as an active measure of the special services
In early 2014, shortly before the Crimean events, the Gifts of the Magi, the greatest shrine in the Christian world, which had never previously left their place of storage on Mount Athos in Greece, were delivered to Ukraine. This event was organized and financed by the Malofeev Foundation. More than 400,000 people in Ukraine paid homage to them.
The shrine was accompanied to Ukraine by employees of the Malofeev Foundation, Alexander Boroday, and Igor Girkin, who was formally the head of the relic's protection. At that time, these names were unknown to anyone.
The delivery of the Gifts of the Magi to Ukraine coincided with a protracted political crisis that became known as Euromaidan. On February 20, 2014, blood was shed in Kyiv. The next day, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych left Kyiv. A change of power took place in the country.
There are serious reasons to believe that the action to bring the shrine to the territory was actually an active measure of the Russian special services and had not only a propaganda but also an intelligence purpose. In Kyiv, 280 thousand people paid homage to the Gifts, in Simferopol – 50 thousand, in Sevastopol – 100 thousand people.
As Malofeev later stated, 100,000 Sevastopol residents prayed for Crimea to return to Russia. According to him, "everyone was already talking" about the possibility of Crimea joining Russia at that time, including Sergei Aksyonov, a deputy of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and Vladimir Konstantinov, the head of this highest state body of Crimea.
Immediately after the end of the campaign with the Gifts of the Magi in early February 2014, Malofeev helped arrange for Alexander Boroday to become Aksyonov's PR consultant.
In the documentary "Crimea. The Path to the Homeland," shown on the Rossiya 1 TV channel in April 2015, Putin said the following:
"It was the night of February 22-23, we finished at about seven in the morning, and I let everyone go and went to bed at seven in the morning. And, parting, I won't hide it, parting, before everyone left, I told all my colleagues, and there were four of them, that the situation had developed in Ukraine in such a way that we were forced to start work on returning Crimea to Russia... but I immediately emphasized that we would do this only if we were absolutely convinced that this was what the people living in Crimea themselves wanted. We found out that 75% of the total population there wanted to join Russia. You understand, a closed survey was conducted, outside the context of the alleged accession."
Putin did not consider it necessary to explain what he meant by the term "closed poll." Malofeev's action to bring the Gifts of the Magi to Ukraine and, in particular, to Crimea was a closed poll. The initiative of the "Orthodox Chekists" in Crimea became a special operation of the Russian special services - a provocation that determined Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
In the wake of the Crimean success, on the night of April 11-12, 2014, Girkin, who had extensive experience in combat operations as part of illegal armed formations, invaded the territory of the Donetsk region of Ukraine with a vanguard of 52 people and captured the small city of Sloviansk, marking the beginning of the Russian seizure of the regions of Eastern Ukraine, where, according to an old agent habit, he took cover with an alias and became known as Strelkov.
In an interview with nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin on the Tsargrad TV channel, owned by Malofeev, on February 20, 2017, Borodai stated that the action in southeastern Ukraine was not coordinated with the Russian political leadership, which forced him to make frequent visits to Moscow for necessary consultations.
This is hard to believe for many reasons, especially since Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy head of the Russian government and an agent of the 5th KGB department of the USSR, on Twitter on May 24, 2014, clearly expressed his support for the invaders and wrote that "I would change all my positions right now, without thinking for a moment, for the happiness of being in the same trench with the defenders of Slavyansk."
However, Rogozin did not give up his posts and did not climb into the trenches. And Strelkov eventually fled from Slavyansk, leaving behind his people, military equipment, and even the real documents of his fighters. Having moved to Donetsk, where the flames of war spread after him, he, according to the testimony of his now former friend Borodai, sat out in a bunker until he was transferred to Russia.
The previous part was published on July 29. The next one will be released on August 12.
All published parts of Vladimir Popov's book "Conspiracy of Scoundrels. Notes of a Former KGB Lieutenant Colonel" can be read here .