A brilliantly designed ambush. With this, Ukrainian and American security services have almost set up a trap for some Russian leaders in the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Almost. The plan narrowly failed.
The Ukrainian security services had set up a website as if it were a Russian private security company. An offer was made there. Tough guys could make $ 5,000 a month by supposedly securing a Venezuelan oil site.
The crowd was huge. Hundreds of Russians signed up. They sent an extensive CV along with their earnings. Some even boasted with ‘involvement’ in the downing of MH17 and another Ukrainian military aircraft, the anonymous and unreliable source in the Ukrainian Security Service claim.
The security service that invented the setup could simply select the potential ’employees’.
“We called them up, and we said, hey, tell me more about yourself. Maybe you’re not actually a soldier, maybe you’re just a plumber”, one of the Security service officers told.
“Then they started revealing everything about themselves, sending us documents, military IDs, evidence of where they had fought. We thought: bingo!”
According to the Ukrainians, the plan was worked out with the Americans and involved American money, but intelligence sources in Washington deny it.
This is followed by a remarkable series of events. The Russians were recruited and would fly to Venezuela, but COVID made flying more difficult. Russia did leave the border with Belarus open. Therefore, the fighters were transferred to Minsk, where they stayed for a long time in a health resort, just outside the capital. They wouldn’t be noticed that way. Later they had to go to Ukraine, walk into an ambush and be tried.
But the Russian fighters were noticed. The Belarusian police took action with a lot of fuss. Everyone was arrested. Belarusian Television proudly showed a parade of captured Russian fighters, including their documents, as evidence of involvement in Russian military operations. The Belarusians were hot. They thought there was a secret Russian operation going on.
No one believed that it was all part of a Ukrainian plot. A few days later, according to CNN, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called his counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, kindly requesting that the Russians go to his country. Transcripts of that conversation show that Zelensky honestly explains that they are people suspected of crimes on Ukrainian territory.
Lukashenko thought about it. He spoke to Putin. And refused the request. A few days later, all but one of the Russians came home safely to Moscow. Mission failed. That’s the official narrative. There is a twist though: according to some sources the plot was ruined from within Ukraine. It should be noted that some inconsistencies in the story are too hard to believe.
Publicly, Zelensky has always maintained that there was no Ukrainian plan. “I understand that the idea of this operation came from, say, other countries, certainly not Ukraine.”However, the intelligence sources in Ukraine, where CNN claimed to have been investigating for months, state that there was indeed a serious operation – and a huge downer due to its failure.
“We could have tried them and shown Russia that the fight is serious”, sips a commander. Instead it become a failure.