ukraine-cia-400x232
[Source: ainhoaristizabal.wordpress.com]

Techniques of Torture and Assassination Deployed by the SBU (Ukraine’s CIA) Recall the U.S.’s Brutal “Operation Phoenix” in Vietnam

Vasily Prozorov, a former officer with the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) stated soon after his defection to Russia in 2018 that the SBU had been advised by the CIA since 2014.

“CIA employees [who have been present in Kyiv since 2014] are residing in clandestine apartments and suburban houses,” he said. “However, they frequently come to the SBU’s central office for holding, for example, specific meetings or plotting secret operations.”

See video: https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/17/traitor-zelensky-assassination-kidnapping-arrest-political-opposition/

A picture containing person, outdoor, standing

Description automatically generated
Vasily Prozorov (left) at work in the anti-terrorist operation zone in Donetsk region with Colonel Sergey Krivonos. [Source: mirror.co.uk]
A person in a suit sitting at a desk with a microphone

Description automatically generated with medium confidence
Vasily Prozorov [Source: tellerreport.com].[

Prozorov’s revelations take on extremely ominous implications in light of a new report by The Grayzone Project detailing the SBU’s participation in a campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture overseen by Ukrainian President and Western media darling Volodymyr Zelensky.

The campaign bears comparison with Operation Phoenix in South Vietnam, which resulted in the killing, imprisonment and torture of thousands of South Vietnamese, including civilian officials accused of being loyal to the left-wing, anti-imperialist National Liberation Front (NLF).

Phoenix Program | CIA at Work in Vietnam (Marine Reacts) - YouTube
Phung Hoang or Phoenix program image. [Source: youtube.com]

During congressional hearings in 1971, Ogden Reid (D-NY) said that, “if the Union had had a Phoenix program during the Civil War, its targets would have been civilians like Jefferson Davis or the mayor of Macon, Georgia.”[1]

In the Ukrainian case, one of the targets of the SBU death squads was the mayor of the eastern city of Kreminna in the Ukrainian-controlled side of Luhansk, Volodymyr Struk.

On March 1, Struk was kidnapped by men in military uniform and then shot in the heart, with his tortured body displayed before the public. Struk had reportedly urged his Ukrainian colleagues to compromise and negotiate with pro-Russian officials.

Volodymyr Struk, Mayor of Kremennaya, Killed in Ukrainian-controlled Luhansk Oblast
Volodymyr Struk [Source: rostov.tsargrad.tv]

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, celebrated the mayor’s murder, declaring on his Telegram page: “There is one less traitor in Ukraine.” 

Anton Gerashchenko: Sheremet Was Killed To Destabilize Situation In Ukraine  - Charter'97 :: News from Belarus - Belarusian News - Republic of Belarus -  Minsk
Anton Gerashchenko [Source: charter97.org]

Gerashchenko has compiled a “blacklist of enemies of the state.” It includes journalists who have been murdered by state-backed death squads, such as prominent columnist Oles Buzina, whose name had appeared on the list.[2]

A person sitting in a chair

Description automatically generated with low confidence
Oles Buzina [Source: wikipedia.org]
Oles Buzina
Scene of Buzina’s murder. [Source: mintpressnews.com]

As of today, eleven mayors in Ukrainian towns are missing. On March 7, the mayor of Gostomel, Yuri Prylypko, was found murdered. Prylypko had reportedly entered into negotiations with the Russian military to organize a humanitarian corridor for the evacuation of his city’s residents—a red line for Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who had long been in conflict with the mayor’s office. (The Ukrainians claim that Prylopko was killed by Russian soldiers while distributing food and medicine)

A picture containing person, person, music

Description automatically generated
Yuri Prylypko [Source: ukrinform.net]

Then there was the murder of Denis Kireev, a top member of the Ukrainian negotiating team, who was killed in broad daylight in Kyiv after the first round of talks with Russia. Kireev was subsequently accused in local Ukrainian media of “treason.”

Denis Kireev (social media)
Denis Kireev [Source: timesofisrael.com]

President Zelensky stated that “there would be consequences for collaborators,” indicating his support for the Phoenix-style operations.

Police State

Currently, Zelensky is promoting a bill that would expand the SBU’s powers. The head of the SBU, Ivan Bakonov, is a close friend of his.

Ivan Bakanov - Wikipedia
Ivan Bakonov [Source: wikipedia.org]

The director of SBU’s counterintelligence, Oleksandr Poklad, is nicknamed “The Strangler.” He has a reputation for using torture and assorted dirty tricks to set up his bosses’ political rivals on treason charges.

Poklad became the new head of Ukraine's counterintelligence - Global  Happenings
Zelensky signing legislation to expand the powers of the SBU. [Source: globalhappenings.com]

In a March 19 executive order, Zelensky invoked martial law to ban 11 opposition parties. The outlawed parties consisted of the entire left-wing, socialist or anti-NATO spectrum in Ukraine. They included the For Life Party, the Left Opposition, the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Socialist Party of Ukraine, Union of Left Forces, Socialists, the Party of Shariy, Ours, State, Opposition Bloc and the Volodymyr Saldo Bloc.

Openly fascist and pro-Nazi parties like the Azov National Corps were left untouched.

On April 12, Zelensky announced the arrest of his principal political rival, Viktor Medvedchuk, by the SBU. In a photo released to the public, Medvedchuk’s face appeared to be swollen and bruised, the likely result of beatings by SBU goons.

Image
[Source: thegrayzone.com]

Inmates considered SBU-run prisons to be “like a small Guantanamo.” Beatings took place at all hours of the night amidst the backdrop of Ukrainian nationalist music.

Phoenix Redux

Douglas Valentine, author of the seminal book The Phoenix Program (1990), sees eerie parallels between the original Phoenix program and Zelensky’s operations today. In both cases, Valentine told CAM in an exclusive interview, neutralism wasn’t tolerated.”

Airey Bros. Radio / Episode 98 / Douglas Valentine - My Met Media
[Source: mymetmedia.com]

Valentine recounted how legendary CIA officer Lucien Conein had told him that Phoenix was, “a very good blackmail scheme for the central government. ‘If you don’t do what I want, you’re VC [Vietcong].’”

New Light in a Dark Corner: Evidence on the Diem Coup in South Vietnam,  November 1963 | National Security Archive
Lucien Conein [Source: nsarchive.gwu.edu]

This is similar to Ukraine today—exemplified by the killing of government negotiators who advocate for peace with Russia, or mayors adopting a compromising or neutralist line.

Valentine noted that under Phoenix, or Phung Hoang as it was called by the CIA’s South Vietnamese counterparts, due process was totally non-existent. South Vietnamese civilians whose names appeared on blacklists could be kidnapped, tortured and murdered simply on the word of an anonymous informer—which is again happening in Ukraine.

Tellingly, after Volodymyr Struk’s death, Anton Gerashchenko claimed that Struk had been judged by the “court of the people’s tribunal” rather than any formal legal state court structure.

Text

Description automatically generated
Struk: killed after a “people’s trial,” Phoenix-style. [Source: thegrayzone.com]

‘Rampage Against Any and All Iterations of Internal Political Opposition”

The Grayzone Project reported that, since Russian troops entered Ukraine on February 24, “Ukraine’s SBU security service had been on a rampage against any and all iterations of internal political opposition,” which indeed sounds a lot like Phioenix. “Leftist Ukrainian activists have faced particularly harsh treatment, including kidnapping and torture.”

On March 3 in the city of Dnipro, SBU officers accompanied by Azov ultra-nationalists raided the homes of activists with the Livizja (Left) organization, which has organized against social spending cuts and right-wing media propaganda.

While one activist said the Azov member “cut my hair off with a knife,” the state security agents proceeded to torture her husband, Alexander Matjuschenko, pressing a gun barrel to his head and forcing him to repeatedly belt out the nationalist salute, “Slava Ukraini!”

“Then they put bags over our heads, tied our hands with tape and took us to the SBU building in a car. There they continued to interrogate us and threatened to cut off our ears,” Matjuschenko’s wife told the German publication Junge Welt.

The Azov members and SBU agents recorded the torture session and published images of Matjuschenko’s bloodied face online.

A picture containing person

Description automatically generated
The torture of left-wing activist Alexander Matjuschenko on March 3 in Dnipro, recorded by Azov members and posted on Telegram by the city of Dnipro. [Source: thegrayzone.com]

Matjuschenko was jailed on the grounds that he was “conducting an aggressive war or military operation,” and now faces 10 to 15 years in prison. Despite enduring several broken ribs from the beating by state-backed ultra-nationalists, he has been denied bail. Meanwhile, dozens of other leftists have been jailed on similar charges in Dnipro.

Among those targeted by the SBU were Mikhail and Aleksander Kononovich, members of the outlawed Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine. Both were arrested and jailed on March 6 and accused of “spreading pro-Russian and pro-Belarusian views.”

Two men taking a selfie

Description automatically generated
Mikhail and Aleksander Kononovich [Source: change.org]

In the following days, the SBU arrested broadcast journalist Yan Taksyur and charged him with treason; human rights activist Elena Berezhnaya; Elena Viacheslavovna, a human rights advocate whose father, Mikhail, was burned to death during the May 2, 2014 ultra-nationalist mob attack on anti-Maidan protesters outside the Odessa House of Trade Unions; independent journalist Yuri Tkachev, who was charged with treason; disabled rights activist Oleg Novikov, who was jailed for three years this April on the grounds that he supported “separatism”; and an untold number of others.

FB
Yuri Tkachev [Source: pressenza.com]
Image
Oleg Novikov under arrest. [Source: thegrayzone.com]

These cases are all reminiscent of the Phoenix program in Vietnam, where Provincial Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) goon squads trained by the CIA targeted human rights and other political activists, journalists and opponents of the Thieu-Ky clique that Washington had propped up in South Vietnam.

Nguyen Van Thieu, left, and Nguyen Cao Ky, center. [Source: nytimes.com]

In the Ukraine case, Zelensky may have gone one step further: There are reports that SBU agents have tried to kidnap and kill dissidents abroad, including opposition figure Anatoly Shariy, a critic of Zelensky and his predecessor Petro Poroshenko and 2014 Maidan coup who was branded by the Lithuanian media as a “favorite friend of Putin.”

Anatoly Shariy [Source: delfi.it]

Fascist Lineage

According to the World Socialist website, the SBU—a successor of the Stalinist secret service KGB in Ukraine—has long-standing ties to the Ukrainian far right, including the neo-fascist Azov Battalion.

It has been heavily involved in efforts by the Ukrainian state to rehabilitate the Nazi collaborationist organizations, the Ukrainian Insurgency Army (UPA), and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which was headed during World War II by fascist Stepan Bandera.

Image -- Members of the Organization for the Rebirth of Ukraine (1930s).
An offshoot of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists pose for a photo with American supporters in the early 1930s. [Source: encyclopediaofukraine.com]

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the first head of the SBU after the Euromaidan regime-change operation of 2013-2014, declared in 2015 that the SBU “does not need to invent anything new, it is important to build on the traditions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and UPA in the 1930–1950 years.”

During World War II, Ukrainian fascists of the OUN-B were involved in the massacres of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles, as well as of Ukrainian opponents of fascism. After the war and well into the 1950s, both the OUN-B and UPA were engaged in an insurgency against Soviet rule, with backing from the CIA, during which the UPA killed another 20,000 Ukrainian civilians.

CIA Pacification

Not surprising perhaps given his historical outlook, Nalyvaichenko nurtured close ties to Washington when he served as general consul to the Ukrainian Embassy in the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration. During that time, Nalyvaichenko was recruited by the CIA, according to his predecessor at the SBU, Alexander Yakimenko, who served under the Russian-oriented government of deposed President Viktor Yanukovych.[3]

Douglas Valentine believes that the CIA “is applying the same organizational structure in Ukraine as it used in South Vietnam to conduct an updated version of the typical ‘two tier’ Phoenix program. The top tier is to assure political control, the lower tier to pacify the population.”

Building SBU stock image. Image of portico, cityscape - 31837849
SBU Headquarters in Kyiv. [Source: dreamstime.com]

Valentine continued:

“Organizationally, Phoenix coordinates CIA foreign intelligence and covert action officers and operations from the highest national level through the provinces down to the most remote territorial outposts.

Foreign intelligence officers advise SBU security service to assure ‘top tier’ internal security and political control; and Ukrainian CIA agents run ops into Donbas, Russia and Belarus, sending illegal travelers, smugglers, and agents to set up agent nets and penetrate the enemy in his territory, [and carry out] sabotage and subversion. SBU and Ukrainian CIA are where hit-lists get authored. CIA officers advise military, militias and mercenaries in deniable political, paramilitary and psychological operations to terrorize and otherwise persuade civilian population to support Zelensky while demoralizing and fighting the enemy.”

A picture containing text

Description automatically generated
SBU emblem and military intelligence officer with SBU emblem on uniform. [Source: informnapalm.org]

As in Vietnam, some of the CIA agents may be operating under the cover of State Department-run police training programs which were instituted in Ukraine after the 2014 Maidan coup.[4] Others were known to have been assigned to specialized paramilitary units fighting in eastern Ukraine.[5]

CIA secretly trained Ukrainian forces | Fox News Video
[Source: video.foxnews.com]

Phoenix Always Rising from the Ashes

According to Valentine, the disaster now unfolding in Ukraine has long been in the works. Starting in 1991 with the fall of the USSR, the CIA began buying property and setting up organizations and businesses in Ukraine so it would have fronts and safe houses.

“All these things serve as places where CIA officers can meet and plot and engage in unilateral recruitments to put politicians and civil servants and businessmen in place who can assure that the CIA can reorganize the economy and the government and put a Defense Minister and Minister of the Interior in place who is on their payroll, who will then appoint police chiefs who will be on the CIA payroll—for the purpose of furthering U.S. policy, not Ukraine policy.”

2022 - Zelensky echoes CIA fears of Russian nuclear risk
[Source: gettotext.com]

The ultimate goal since 1991 was to start a war in the Ukraine against Russia, which weakens Russia but also forces Ukrainians to flee the war zones. As soon as that happens, the prices go down and who is going to go swooping in there to buy it up?

Meanwhile, Valentine says, “the CIA is building a compatible civil base through unilateral recruitments. Also, U.S. universities and unions send advisers to help create schools and indoctrinate youth and workers.

Business advisers create a Rotary Club and a Chamber of Commerce. They create a foreign relations council. This is how the CIA rules a foreign society: through the ownership of property and having the proper people in government security and defense industries and control of the civic institutions.”

According to Valentine, “the CIA is working with bankers. They want Ukrainians putting their money in a Morgan Stanley brokerage firm in Kyiv. They want to suck the life out of Ukrainians. People do it on the promise of a brighter future—others are bribed, still others like Zelensky in my humble opinion are blackmailed.”

Zelensky has refused US offer to help leave Kyiv? - The Week
Volodymyr Zelensky—was he bribed? [Source: theweek.in]

“Whatever, the CIA is manipulating them toward U.S. policies. CIA officers are recruiting people and putting them in place, having them sign contracts.

It would be like the Russians coming here to the United States and recruiting people and our police forces and our government institutions. It’s illegal. You can’t do it. You can’t take money from a foreign intelligence agency and work against your own government, but that is what the CIA is doing in the Ukraine right now on a massive scale.”

Valentine further notes:

“They’re always finding a reason to start a war, so they can send the next generation of young men into battle, to learn how to kill people in the most brutal fashion—that’s Phoenix, always rising from the ashes of war. The U.S. has an imperative to be as super-aggressive as it can be, so it doesn’t lose its edge. If its predatory impulse to dominate was stilted in Vietnam, that doesn’t mean the soldiers and spies aren’t going to pop up someplace else. They’re always going to pop up someplace else. They always do. Like in Ukraine.”

Where Is the Congressional Oversight?

Valentine pointed out that, at the conclusion of the congressional hearings into the original Phoenix program in 1971, Representatives Pete McCloskey (R-CA), John Conyers (D-MI), Ben Rosenthal (D-NY), and Bella Abzug (D-NY) stated their belief that “the people of these United States … have deliberately imposed on the Vietnamese people a system of justice which admittedly denies due process of law…. In so doing, we appear to have violated the 1949 Geneva Convention for the protection of civilian peoples” in time of war.”

“Some of us who have visited Vietnam,” they further said, “share a real fear that the Phoenix program is an instrument of terror… and that U.S. civilian and military personnel have participated for over three years in the deliberate denial of due process of law to thousands of people held in secret interrogation centers built with U.S. dollars.” They added that “Congress owes a duty to act swiftly and decisively to see that the practices involved are terminated forthwith.”[6]

Now where is the congressional oversight of the CIA’s abuses in Ukraine? And mainstream media scrutiny, which would generate the kind of public outrage necessary for instituting congressional hearings?


  1. Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2000), 13.

  2. Buzina advocated for unity among Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia and campaigned to outlaw neo-Nazi organizing.

  3. Mintpress reported that the CIA has an entire floor in the SBU headquarters in Kyiv.

  4. For the historical pattern, see Jeremy Kuzmarov, Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation Building in the American Century (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012).

  5. CIA agents trained their Ukrainian counterparts, according to a Yahoo News exposé, in sniper techniques and use of Javelin anti-tank missiles.

  6. Valentine, The Phoenix Program, 235.


CovertAction Magazine is made possible by subscriptionsorders and donations from readers like you.

Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism

Click the whistle and donate

When you donate to CovertAction Magazine, you are supporting investigative journalism. Your contributions go directly to supporting the development, production, editing, and dissemination of the Magazine.

CovertAction Magazine does not receive corporate or government sponsorship. Yet, we hold a steadfast commitment to providing compensation for writers, editorial and technical support. Your support helps facilitate this compensation as well as increase the caliber of this work.

Please make a donation by clicking on the donate logo above and enter the amount and your credit or debit card information.

CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your gift is tax-deductible for federal income purposes. CAI’s tax-exempt ID number is 87-2461683.

We sincerely thank you for your support.


Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s). CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI), including its Board of Directors (BD), Editorial Board (EB), Advisory Board (AB), staff, volunteers and its projects (including CovertAction Magazine) are not responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. This article also does not necessarily represent the views the BD, the EB, the AB, staff, volunteers, or any members of its projects.

Differing viewpoints: CAM publishes articles with differing viewpoints in an effort to nurture vibrant debate and thoughtful critical analysis. Feel free to comment on the articles in the comment section and/or send your letters to the Editors, which we will publish in the Letters column.

Copyrighted Material: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York, we are making such material available in an effort to advance the understanding of humanity’s problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. You can read more about ‘fair use’ and US Copyright Law at the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Republishing: CovertAction Magazine (CAM) grants permission to cross-post CAM articles on not-for-profit community internet sites as long as the source is acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original CovertAction Magazine article. Also, kindly let us know at info@CovertActionMagazine.com. For publication of CAM articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: info@CovertActionMagazine.com.

By using this site, you agree to these terms above.


About the Author

32 COMMENTS

  1. […] «Noen av oss som har besøkt Vietnam,» sa de videre, «deler en reell frykt for at Føniks-programmet er et instrument for terror … og at amerikansk sivilt og militært personell har deltatt i over tre år i bevisst fornektelse av rettssikkerheten til tusenvis av mennesker som holdes i hemmelige avhørssentre bygget med amerikanske dollar». De la til at «Kongressen har en plikt til å handle raskt og besluttsomt for å se til at de involverte praksisene blir avsluttet umiddelbart.»[6] […]

  2. Another great article! I have long followed the implications of the Phoenix Program and its implications. Over the years, Douglas Valentine has certainly done a most important job in his intensive investigations.

    Here in Aotearoa/New Zealand, I have had a special interest in the 1965-70 Indonesian Genocide, following information imparted to the NZ Nuclear Free Zone Committee by ex-CIA agent Ralph McGehee when he toured our country on a speaking-tour in 1986 as a guest of the Committee of which I was an active member.

    Could you please send me a copy of this article which I shall send to key Ministers of the NZ Government. Thanks again!

  3. Jeremy: Excellent article once again. Initially I thought this was going to be just a rehash of the Grayzone article, but no — you’ve covered the whole turf thoroughly and exceptionally well. Another CAM “keeper” for me!

    One small quibble: The photo captioned “Oleksandr Poklad aka The Strangler. [Source: globalhappenings.com]” actually looks remarkably like Zelensky. Is this in error?

  4. The tactics used in Ukraine were also used to oust President Trump, the actual legitimate winner of the 2020 US presidential election.

  5. Great work, Jeremy, thank you.

    The horrors you describe should not surprise us. CIA is doing in Ukraine what they’ve been doing for decades the world over. Planting terror and teaching others how to do it, is a CIA specialty. In Latin Latin America CIA distributes it terror ‘manual’ in Spanish, to ensure total understanding of their teachings. How to kidnap, torture, ransom demands, extract information, kill, etc.

    I particularly abhor their work when the aim is to prolong wars, which is what they are now doing in Ukraine, on behalf of the American Government and the War Industry. It is simply the fact that there is much money in prolonging and not winning any wars immediately. The US employ private contractors for War supplies and their weapons manufacturers are private players. There is a nexus between them and politicians who have a vested interest in prolonging and not decisively winning wars.

    it is like a competent Doctor not curing his very rich patient quickly for obvious reasons. Many brilliant and
    competent health consultants do not cure the rich patient very quickly. It has nothing to do with his professional competence but ……

Leave a Reply