Ukrainian Security Services Hunting ‘Russian Collaborationists’

Aug. 11, 2022 (EIRNS)—In his daily update yesterday, Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, the director of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Joint Coordination headquarters for Humanitarian Response, charged that Ukrainian security services are now going house to house in Kharkiv and other locations, hunting for Ukrainians who are not sufficiently anti-Russian, to accuse them of collaborating with the invaders. Mizintsev announced:

“It is reliably known that in the near future the Kiev regime, under the pretext of allegedly searching for adjusters of air and artillery strikes of the Russian Armed Forces, plans to send a group of SSU and other security agencies to Kharkiv to conduct another large-scale punitive operation to identify citizens loyal to Russia (expressing pro-Russian views) and subsequently accuse them of ‘collaborationism.’ ”

Mizintsev elaborated:

“At the same time, SSU officers intend to use as grounds for detaining the city residents, the histories of calls and SMS messages to Russian numbers found in their phones, correspondence in messengers condemning the current Ukrainian authorities, subscriptions in social networks to Russian channels, photo or video footage of the results of defeat of Ukrainian military facilities, and information from snitching on their neighbors, friends, relatives or acquaintances. Detained citizens will be subjected to threats of physical violence against their family members, violence and torture, as has already happened in Odessa, Nikolaev, Slavyansk, Sumy, Chernigov and a number of other populated areas. We warn the international community in advance about this inhuman action being prepared by the criminal authorities in Kiev, which fully replicates the methods of the Nazis in the occupied territories during the Great Patriotic War.”

The action reported by Mizintsev comes three weeks after Ukrainian President Volodymyr  Zelenskyy fired Ivan Bakanov, the head of the SSU security service, and Prosecutor-General Iryna Venediktova, claiming they weren’t rooting out the hundreds of employees of both agencies working for Russia in the areas liberated by Russian troops.