Russia’s foreign intelligence agency SVR published another report about supposedly impending political changes in Kiev, this time claiming that the US is considering former Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov as a potential replacement for Zelensky. They’ve correspondingly ordered affiliated NGOs to prepare the information space for facilitating his rise and are allegedly working with opposition members to that end. This latest report follows several from the past year that have yet to come to fruition:
* 12 December 2023: “Naryshkin’s Scenario Forecast About The West Replacing Zelensky Shouldn’t Be Scoffed At”
* 22 January 2024: “Why’d SVR Publish Its Prediction About An Impending Bureaucratic Reshuffle In Ukraine?”
* 7 May 2024: “Russia Hopes To Influence Ukraine’s Possibly Impending US-Backed Regime Change Process”
SVR also published a related report on 20 June that wasn’t separately analyzed like the preceding three but which once again claimed that former Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny “is considered the most suitable candidate” for replacing Zelensky. Their latest report about Avakov now supposedly being primed for this position therefore came out of left field but it builds upon the trend of them publicly raising awareness of what’s presented as the US’ political engineering plans in Ukraine.
It’s worth wondering at this point about the veracity of their earlier reports since none of what they claimed in this respect has yet to come to pass, which can then help assess this report’s accuracy. There are several explanations for why that is, the first of which is that their information was accurate, but the US then changed its plans after SVR revealed them. The second is that the information that they obtained was at least partially inaccurate, while the third is that they’re trying to influence events in Kiev.
In all actuality, a combination of these three is the most likely explanation. Readers should remember that no foreign intelligence service, especially one as globally renowned as SVR, ever makes public statements about foreign issues of significance just for the sake of it. Every one of their cited reports obviously had an ulterior motive behind them regardless of their accuracy, which was to influence events in Kiev as well as the perceptions of civil society and the elite in Ukraine and the West.
As regards the first motive, Russia either wanted to sow distrust between the US and Ukraine and between Zelensky and other figures and/or wanted to foil the plans that they revealed by forcing the US to change them in order to avoid proving Russia right by letting them unfold as predicted. Pertaining to the second, this is inextricably connected to the aforesaid first half but also concerns efforts to get average Ukrainians and Westerners to favor an end to NATO’s proxy war on Russia.
Viewed in this way, it can be said that SVR’s presumed objective of influencing events in Kiev might have been successful in at least some of the reported cases precisely because none of what it predicted came to pass, though this of course remains the realm of speculation and critics will predictably call it “copium”. The second presumed objective’s success is more difficult to gauge due to the lack of reliable polling, especially in Ukraine, let alone any way to directly connect SVR’s reports to changing attitudes.
Informed by this insight, while the veracity of SVR’s latest report about Avakov being primed to replace Zelensky is impossible to assess, it nevertheless still serves to advance the political and soft power objectives that were described. In this case, Russia either wants to sow distrust between the US and Ukraine and between Zelensky and the mentioned figures and/or wants the US to take Avakov out of the running for whatever reason, whether to consider someone else or to cynically keep Zelensky in place.
On the soft power front, this claim reinforces the perception among Ukrainians and Westerners that trouble is brewing between the US and Ukraine and between the latter’s elite, which might make average folks less confident that Kiev can achieve victory and thus predispose them to peace talks. Time will tell whether Avakov replaces Zelensky or not, but as was earlier written, SVR’s report might still succeed in some of its political goals even if what it claimed doesn’t come to fruition.
