– A couple of months ago you could have become the head of the Criminal Investigation Bureau if you had reached an agreement with Arsen Avakov and Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Why didn’t you seize such an opportunity?

– Did such an opportunity really exist?

– They say it did…

– And what would be in exchange for it? The head of the Criminal Investigation Bureau – in exchange for what?

– It’s question for you.

– It’s all parapolitical idle talk as to my somewhat demonized image. I do everything in the public view. I have the luxury of being myself, unlike all those who file claims, take legal steps or just don’t meet appropriate requirements but receive certain appointments according to the results of so-called “competitions”. I take the liberty to laugh at incompetence of the winner of such a competition.

 

– Truba.

– It’s an instrument – by his telling last name as well as by the ideological function (note: in Ukrainian truba means a trumpet).

– Actually, people say that you weren’t appointed because you would never be anyone’s instrument.

– I am an instrument of Law, no matter how pathetic it may sound. There are things that are taboo for any adequate person, e. g. enslaving or tenancy at will of yourself. That’s why I care about my reputation and professionalism, which, in its turn, is taboo for strangers.

– Do you mean that professionalism is a taboo in our state?

– Unfortunately, there are few true professionals in our state. The majority of them belong only to the segment of future parties to cases in the anti-corruption court. There are “highly professional ones” in this corrupted area. I categorically assert it, to my regret. But they are “highly professional” in dominoes and checkers, not in chess. It’s professionalism of parasites feeding on the well-being of people – people, who, in their turn, regard all state institutions with great skepticism and sometimes even with hatred. Thus, no matter how long we – and I am related to the authorities, too – cry out about the happiness of our people, it has nothing to do with happiness.

– You were told in your eyes that you wouldn’t be the head of the Criminal Investigation Bureau.

– Well, they announced the results of the competition, according to which only two persons among all voted for me. The “independent” high professionals from the competition committee said I didn’t meet the “criteria”.

– And unofficially?

– I don’t pursue political negotiations because I’m not a political figure. I knew and understood well the disposition of this political collective farm pretty well.

– So, you took a risk?

– I always take a risk if I’m sure of my rightness and competence. No result as to the CIB is just God’s plan, which suggests that I probably had no need for it. I fulfill the function of my appointment to the best of my abilities.

– What’s your function now?

– My function is to tie-up with Law the terrible consequences of the war.

– And could you tell us what you are doing now – without using philosophical and lyrical phrases but through examples?

– The function of procuracy supervision hasn’t been canceled.

– Supervision only, because you can’t carry out investigation now.

– There are other, new investigative agencies in our state. There even is one agency that practically hasn’t been created up to now.

– Who is now investigating those cases that once belonged to your department – Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), Security Service of Ukraine (SSU)?

– As a result of the half-year blowing the tubes before the start of the game, now it’s like this – the person who has registered a certain case will investigate it. I will not walk with a begging bowl and beg anyone to register crimes! At the same time, I observe another trend – the military prosecutor’s office investigates the most disgusting crimes well known all over the country, say nothing of deserters, road accidents, hazing, journalists killed and resurrected, explosions.

– Why is it so? Due to the letters, petitions to the Prosecutor General from the heads of the bodies carrying out the investigations. Why? After all, only we go only forward and never back. There are no information leaks from the military prosecutor’s office. We do everything legally and fast indeed. So, there is always one and the same thing in life – in case of a fire, everyone is looking for buckets and water. So, we bear resemblance to the universal state fireman if the worst comes to the worst, no matter whether it’s our jurisdiction or not. Because there are practically no effective and reliable prosecutorial units in the state except us.

– But at the same time, you are accused of blocking the competition for other appointments in the IB in order to preserve your department and forbade your subordinates to apply for the competition in the Investigation Bureau (IB).

– Oh, again I’m a demon or almost the villain from “Harry Potter” who is being talked about “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”. So, the same with me – an instrument was hardly produced a first sound, and Matios had already blocked something. Only poorly educated people, without knowledge of the law, those who are other people’s instruments, can talk about such things. So, it turns out that I’m smarter than the whole system of the National Security Committee with its all negative consequences of not too inefficient manual control.

– Do you mean that Truba is an instrument of Sergei Pashynsky, the head of the National Security Committee?

– I’m talking in such a way for the smart person to understand, without wasting the nerves of my opponents with their imaginary phobias. I didn’t block anything, because no one can block the Law. All military prosecutors signed the military contract – all they are officers of the Armed Forces. The list of conditions for release during a special period includes only death, medical discharge or liquidation of the military body. The military prosecutor’s office isn’t liquidated as a body. The special period also includes the war in the East. A person in poor health goes to a hospital, writes about his unfitness for military service and then can find another profession.

– In other words, all this is blocked because of inconsistency of the laws?

– It’s a little bit wrong, most likely because of inconsistency of the norms of the active laws in our state. And it was a little bit short-sighted action on the part of the Venice Commission, which coordinated such norms. In a state at war, it’s a nonsense to make civilians responsible for investigation of the military crimes. Let me give the following illustrative and hypothetical example: imagine the US with its 52 states and Mexico. Imagine that Mexico annexed two border states: Texas and California. The National Guard and the US Army are conducting an attack to retake these territories. And the civilian FBI supervises and evaluates these military actions. Can you imagine such a situation? So, when representatives of the US embassy and defense department heard this example, they expressed real misunderstanding and surprise and said that it was absolutely impossible. And unfortunately, our long-suffering Ukraine is now in the same situation. And for the past six months, the Ukrainian FBI has only three offices in the government building and a “soloist of the orchestra”.

 

 

– As far as I remember, the CIB was planned when Pshonka was the Prosecutor General and the “Venetian” read the law.

– The authorities didn’t see any war crimes at that time, and the military prosecutor’s office was liquidated in favour of Russia and the Venice Commission. The military courts were also liquidated before this. There were no such realities of the war as there are now, and that’s why the entire prosecutor’s jurisdiction was reposed in hands of the CIB. Were it not for the war, it could have continued this way. But such things are a priori impossible during the war. The Law in the war must wear a uniform and shouldn’t carry out everlasting competitions according to the labor code. I have statistic data, and they’re terrible. Over the past four years, there are more than 40,000 cases of ammunition trafficking in our country. I don’t know and I doubt that so many weapons remained in circulation since the Second World War. Where did people get these 40,000 assault rifles, pistols, brasses, grenades, grenade launchers? This is only discovery of the law enforcers. And statistics usually reflects only 10% of weapons within the state. So, we have 400,000 unaccounted weapons outside the law. I’m convinced these weapons are from the zone of anti-terrorist operation (ATO).

– Are they all smuggled or stolen as well?

– 2014 and 2015 was the time of serious fights. There are combat loss certificates as to armaments. The number of losses, the number of damaged weapons. Nobody makes photos of the damaged assault rifles and nobody attaches them to these reports. All those who went there or even helped people in ATO zone, brought home along with the post-traumatic disorder some remembrancer: a bullet or a grenade launcher. I’m not kidding. And we have all these things in our peaceful life … And the owners of this weapons belong to the largest party – the party of those who are undecided about their political views, but they can change the political map of Ukraine in the nearest future. One day, when everyone will realize the level of pre-election populism, the time of the unregistered politicians of the third force will most likely come. And the first one who takes any odious or recognizable politician by the scruff of the neck and hangs him on the pillar, will win this election, with enthusiastic cheering of the crowd.

– But Beletsky doesn’t have sky-high ratings yet, nor the other far-right ones.

– What has it to do with Beletsky? He and his National Corpus don’t account for almost 300,000 of all the demobilized in the last four years. I recently was in my small homeland – an area where ​​26,000 Huzuls live, and 150 people there were involved into ATO. I asked the head of the district state administration: how many participants of ATO do you have? He didn’t know. He called the military commissar. And how many of them are employed? Did you help them? He didn’t know again. So, who are you in the eyes of any Huzul after this? You’re a bastard, rather than an authority. A Huzul, like any Ukrainian, is a disaffected person – if there is no law, he creates it himself.

– And in the background of all this, you are initiating a bill on establishment of the State Bureau of Military Justice …

– It isn’t so – the bill was initiated by Andriy Kozhemyakin – chairman of the committee on law enforcement, People’s Deputy Igor Lapin and my sister. Well, it looks like nepotism, but I asked her for it – she knows the needs and problems of the ATO soldiers as nobody else. 63 Ukrainian soldiers who were one foot in the grave, returned to life thanks to her volunteer activity. So, this bill was introduced to the representatives by three parliamentary fractions – People’s Front, Petro Poroshenko’s bloc and Julia Timoshenko’s bloc. Let the deputies discuss and accept it now.

– But you have no support in the debating chamber. The President Administration is trying to find out who passed your bill from the Pashinsky’s committee to Kozhemyakin.

– Pashinsky holds the bill again. And I do not answer questions related to politics.

– But without political issues, you won’t pass the bill you need through the chamber.

– It isn’t me who needs it.

– But who does?

– Deputy factions who serve people and the state and realize that the army and the Law are the backbone of the state.

– Then it will be buried.

– No, it won’t.

– Why?

– Because I definitely believe that God loves Ukraine and won’t deprive the decision-makers from their last brains.

– So, you expect that the deputies are simply scared of being hung by the legs or shot, like it was in that story with Savchenko?

– No, fear is not effective. I prefer persuading with actions. So, I’m deeply convinced that the fear that knocks every day at the doors of every Ukrainian home, with explosions and shots in civilian places – that’s what convinces. When I passed the law on the military prosecutor’s office, I weren’t convincing anybody. It was written in 7 days and passed a day before the tragedy near Ilovaisk.

– You need 226 [affirmative votes] to get the result.

– There will be.

– Where from? You haven’t been given [them from] the State Bureau of Investigations, but you will be given [them from] the Bureau of Military Justice?

– I do not aspire to the position of the head of the Bureau of Military Justice. I am a military prosecutor and by autumn 2019 I will perform this function under the contract. I don’t need extra power, I have enough of it. There are decent and competent candidates among the officers from the ATO (anti-terrorist operation). For example, Igor Lapin, who has legal education, as well as parliamentary and real combat experience.

– But he is close to Avakov and for many he’s unacceptable.

– I do not want to read coffee grounds now with you. And no matter what Andriy Biletsky said that Avakov’s weight is more than just that of a minister (with which I agree), but sometimes it happens that military troops and units are running – and in 7 days the law on the military prosecutor’s office is written and adopted, without reference to the Venice Commission. Because that’s the matter of death and life, not political bargaining. Now the situation is exactly the same.

– And if there won’t be Ilovaisk?

– It won’t be so at the front. We (the army) turned into pre-sighted targets and hostages of the non-alternative Minsk process. But we have our own Ilovaisk in every village. The harvest time and autumn will begin, and the weapons will start to show up through illegal takeovers, social explosions and all sorts of other troubles.

– Illegal takeovers continued last year and the year before last. Different deputies from different sides participated in them, including volunteer associations such as those like Semenchenko’s ‘Donbass’.

– Well, if this is a positive voluntary association of this incognito, then I have no words.

 

– And where is the case initiated against him?

– At the Prosecutor’s Office of the Donetsk region – at the request of the National Police in accordance with the decision of the Prosecutor General. For almost a year. I am not challenging the decision of my boss. He has this right and this is his competence. But when the process does not take off, it does not take off. And nobody will finish writing.

– Finish writing what?

– Nobody will make things up. We don’t have a large number of people who are willing to testify against one or another person. In Ukrainian realities, often there’s a diagnosis “it’s none of my business.” But as Otto von Bismarck said, nobody’s canceled the role of personality in history. And near every building of the Parliament disliked by the majority of people, there is its own “Dynamo” stadium named after Lobanovsky.

– What are you driving at?

– Nothing. Just read about what happened in Chile 50 years ago.

– Let’s get back to creating the bureau. It turns out that you have good contacts with Kozhemyakin, whom you wrote this bill with.

– You forgot that originally I had been just a prosecutor, and then I served in the SSU (Security Service of Ukraine) for eight years, where for doing nothing I had risen to the rank of a general.

– And there was another general…

– …General Kozhemyakin, who was the first deputy head of the SSU. His consciousness and reasonableness as a man and an officer, who deeply cares and knows exactly what the life of the military men is like reflects credit on him. But even with his committee he could not stop the absurdity of making Lozovy’s amendments through the budgetary code to the CPC (Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine). This is an absurdity and shame on the system of law.

– Well, but if your prosecutors can’t apply for a competition to the SBI (State Bureau of Investigations), who will be hired to the relevant unit?

– In a particular situation, I don’t care, because it is a solo of one inefficient and unworkable instrument. Let it get started, or again go to Kivalov to a paid conference like it was this weekend, when traffic in the half of Odessa was blocked. Let him talk with the whole smuggling world of Southern Palmyra (note: the nickname of Odessa), and then blurts something weird like that there won’t be SBMJ (State Bureau of Military Justice) anymore. The only thing he can say for sure is whether he brushed his teeth in the morning or not. That’s all! In other cases, he needs to go and ask for info. And this is our Edward Hoover? Are you joking? Already after three months of his half-year-old pregnancy, a child named the SBI should be born. God forbid it suffocates on its way to birth in the back of the pipelines.

– Are you talking about the head of the SBI again?

– I’m talking figuratively about the situation.

– Are you talking so figuratively you’re with your subordinates as well?

– With all. They already got used to it. Some of too “literate” people call it phrase-mongering, but whoever has brains in his head will understand.

– You are also non-ideal. There is such a spot in your biography as, for example, the Andrew’s case (the murdered SSU officer Andrei Galushchenko); also, you allegedly covered the smugglers from the 92nd brigade.

– I have no spots. The guilty have been identified. The mechanism of the crime has been revealed. The suspects were served with charges. Pre-trial investigation and trial were conducted. Those who organized Andrew’s murder are in the next world. It just happened. One who is fighting against our state must understand that on the 4th year of war our army learned to shoot at long distances.

– It’s somehow weird. Like with the Savchenko’s case, I had a feeling that from a certain stage it was a fake, and the issue was about another thing?

– I will say figuratively. Unfortunately, after the reforms of all housing offices, Schwanders like those who came to Professor Preobrazhensky and told that wearing galoshes wasn’t necessary, appeared in these spheres of life in Ukraine. The level of skepticism and total disregard for state institutions in the society has reached the peak – well, it’s better to say the bottom. Nobody trusts any person – just their own, sorry, primitive basic feelings and impressions. I never tell a turner that his chips look improper because it seemed so to me. I can pass my position of a military prosecutor to such Jacks of all trades, but nobody wants it for some reason.

– Why did the cases of Kulik and Kurchenko were taken from you?

– I will say about it jokingly but seriously. I never want kettlebells if they are not golden and worthless in the terms of human qualities. It is the prosecutor general that takes cases away somewhere and from somewhere. He took away what at that time was valuable for the case.

– What is valuable – Kulik or the case of Kurchenko?

– I said what I said. I try to abstract my mind from his so poorly done procedural actions.

– Are you talking about the decision of Kramatorsk court?

– I cannot comment on imperfect things, much less the court decisions. The country should receive this money, but the form of receipt cannot be similar to the actions of the predecessors.

– Why do you use an armored car? Is there any threat?

– I am aware of Ukrainian realities and possible consequences too well – ad nauseam, so to speak.

– Are you also aware of Babchenko’s case?

– Yes, from the very beginning. We supervise this case at the request of the SSU. All the documents about it are available.

– And how many people are there on the list?

– I won’t tell you anything about it. All in its own good time. But the work is well done.

– But in this case, there is too much distrust. Did you really have to mimic the murder?

– Article 222 of the CPC (Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine) forbids me to disclose the findings of the investigation. The work is going on, and it’s very productive. Read the transcripts of the suspect Herman in the appeals court and compare whether it corresponds to the conclusions made by quasi-experts.

– If I were him, I would rather lie that President was taking my factory from me. People would believe it more.

– But he says something different, in a way he confirms being involved in horrible things. None of the investigators and prosecutors ever tortured or humiliated him. The man simply began to realize how much evidence we have. I will only say that we have about 20 thousand files in one medium and more than 4 thousand in another. This is an intensive correspondence related to receiving tasks and orders as to the terrorist activities and methods of carrying them out. This is valid and legally obtained evidence.

– And this is just one person – why not do it through different people?

– Are you a fan of Hollywood action-gangster films or Indian movies with Mithhun Chakraborti? The action is epic in them. But here I’ll say the following: one of the suspects was the center of payment and financing of disparate groups. In each war, there always is some Parvus, who brought Lenin money for the revolution that flooded the Slavs with blood for decades. He also was of Jewish origin. In this case, certain people want to do the same with Ukraine again.

– Could it turn out that this case is connected with Savchenko’s one?

– Do you mean the brains behind them? There may be everything in this intricate life, but while I’d rather not make such analogies yet. However, all this is just the tip of the iceberg. Now measures are being taken… No, I will not say anything.

– And may there be other lists along with the list 47?

– Yeah, right. Now I’ll call my secretary, buy a ticket to Minsk, then go to Moscow to Lubyanka and from there I’ll sure send you a photo of the list and bend over backwards to convince all these experts.

– I’m aware that the people who could be killed may be those who aren’t on the list.

– Nobody knows the fate of a man. And during a war, it’s impossible to anticipate and foresee everything. But if nobody does anything, we can continue watching human bodies being stacked. But there are healthy forces in this country that haven’t yet united and maybe haven’t yet chosen their Augusto Pinochet – but he is already knocking at the doors. Or looking for the stadium. I am convinced.

– Oh! Are you going to the presidential election?

– I cannot – and categorically would not – like to be the last in the queue of 40-some candidates for wearing a heavy and ungrateful crown. I love my job. But now I ring the bell before the deaf and burn a candle before the blind, as Skovoroda said. I’m telling what the threat is. I want to prevent it. This is possible yet if the State Bureau of Military Justice is created.

 

Source: www.theinsider.ua