Kiev puppet is part of Putin’s toolkit, US warns

Russia is exploring multiple ways to destabilise Ukraine and topple the pro-western government, US secretary of state Antony Blinken says.

Antony Blinken. Picture: AFP

Russia is exploring multiple ways to destabilise Ukraine and topple the pro-western government, the United States warned yesterdayafter details emerged of an alleged plot to install a puppet leadership in Kiev.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, declined to comment on the specific intelligence behind the plot, revealed by Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, but said that such tactics were “very much part of the Russian toolkit”.

Truss, 46, said on Saturday that MI6 intelligence suspected that Russian security agencies wanted to replace President Zelensky with Yevhen Murayev, a former Ukrainian MP. The unusual statement prompted an angry reaction from Moscow, and mockery from Murayev himself. He suggested Britain’s spy agency had been duped, dismissing the story as “more Mr Bean than James Bond” and posting a mock-up image online of himself as 007.

Blinken, 59, asked by CNN about the alleged plot, said: “I can’t comment on specific pieces of intelligence but we’ve been warning about just this kind of tactic for weeks.” He noted that Washington sanctioned four Ukrainians last week said to be Russian agents.

Blinken met Sergey Lavrov, 71, his Russian counterpart, in Geneva on Friday as part of a diplomatic effort to defuse the crisis caused by the Russian military build up. Up to 127,000 troops are estimated to be massing on Ukraine’s border. He said claims of a plot did not make an invasion any more or less likely but “as always, Russia develops lots of options for doing things. It is something people have to be aware of.”

Ukraine said yesterday the claims by Britain should be taken seriously, and vowed to counter the destabilising Russian influence over its political and economic spheres.

Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, dismissed the claims as “disinformation” and accused Britain of seeking to stoke tensions. “We call on the Foreign Office to stop provocative activities, stop spreading nonsense,” she said.

Truss suggested that Russian intelligence maintained links with Murayev and four former Ukrainian politicians but did not provide details of how they might topple the Kiev government.

Murayev, 45, heads Nashi, a tiny pro-Russian party, which does not have a single seat in Ukraine’s parliament. Contacted by The Times, he laughed off the allegations and said he was on holiday with his family “somewhere hot, 7,000km from Kiev”.

He added: “How ridiculous that these allegations could be made without any basis of proof. I have been sanctioned by Russia since 2018. I can’t even enter Russia, as I am technically termed a threat to their national security.” He changed his Facebook profile picture yesterday (Sunday) to the 007 mock-up, adding: “On reflection, the accusations belong more to Mr Bean than James Bond. My wife and I laughed a lot.”

Murayev said that his family’s assets had been seized by Moscow after he fell out with Viktor Medvedchuk, a Kremlin-linked tycoon and the leader of Ukraine’s biggest opposition party. Medvedchuk, 67, whose daughter is President Putin’s godchild, faces treason charges in Ukraine and is under house arrest.

“I suggest Ukrainian politicians are doing something to discredit me, and deluding British intelligence,” Murayev said. “I have been in conflict with Medvedchuk for a long time. It is absurd, with that in mind and the fact that I am sanctioned by Russia, to suggest that I was asked by the Russians to lead an administration. It is a hit on the credibility of British intelligence.”

Across Ukraine thousands of civilians are receiving combat training and in time of war would be under direct command of the Ukrainian military. Picture: Getty Images

The SBU, the Ukrainian state security service, was widely criticised in 2018 after it faked the murder of a Russian opposition journalist in Kiev in what it said was a sting operation to thwart a Kremlin-backed assassination plot.

Volodymyr Fesenko, a Ukrainian political analyst, expressed doubt that Russia would choose Murayev to head a pro-Kremlin government in Kiev. He suggested that MI6 may have fallen foul of a deliberate “leak” by Russian intelligence agencies.

The Foreign Office named four Ukrainian politicians it said had links to the Russian intelligence agents it said were behind the plot. One was Mykola Azarov, 74, a former prime minister.

Separately, Admiral Kay-Achim Schonbach, head of the German navy, has been forced to resign after saying that Putin deserved “respect” and that the idea he was planning to invade Ukraine was “nonsense”; comments that led the Ukrainians to summon the German ambassador.

(Additional reporting: Marc Bennetts, Moscow, David Charter, Washington, Bruno Waterfield, Brussels)

The Times