“Hidden” influence: the ambassador of Ukraine to the United States enrolled half of the Russian UN staff in the “FSB agents”

The Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States, Vladimir Yelchenko, said that half of the Russians working for the UN are FSB agents. The diplomat said this in an interview with Ukrinform.

Answering a question about how strongly Moscow influences the work of the UN, Yelchenko said that the Russian delegation allegedly does this, including covertly - “through its personnel”. He added that about two hundred to three hundred Russians work in the organization’s secretariat, and half of them, according to the ambassador, are “agents of the FSB”.

“Russian cadres work for the special services, or, in a milder version, for the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation. I generally think that this is an agent network created within the UN, ”the diplomat said.

Yelchenko claims that this scheme developed back in Soviet times, when every second worker from the USSR was supposedly an “agent”. According to him, with the help of such people, Russia secretly affects the work of the UN.

• Vladimir Elchenko
• © Mike Segar / Reuters

“By the way, from time to time we see information that the American special services asked some UN employee from Russia to go home. That is, they are sometimes caught, ”the diplomat added.

A member of the State Duma’s international affairs committee, Anton Morozov, commenting on the words of RT’s ambassador, noted that for such statements one needs to be well versed in the special services, and, accordingly, be involved in such activities.

“It is surprising that the ambassador of Ukraine is so knowledgeable in the activities of foreign intelligence services,” the deputy noted.

He added that it is natural for UN employees to defend the interests of the country that sent them there. Morozov specified that only specialized agencies of the receiving state, that is, the United States, and not the ambassador of a third country, can give a conclusion on work for special services.

The Director General of the Center for Political Information, Alexei Mukhin, said in an interview with RT that such allegations need legal assessment.

“Such statements must have serious consequences. It is necessary to check who appointed him and whether he has the necessary competencies to make such statements, ”the expert added.

In an interview, Yelchenko also said that Russia, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has a great influence in the organization. According to him, some countries respect Moscow, but there are also those who support it supposedly only because they are “afraid”.

“Those 20-23 countries that vote in unison with Russia are 100% dependent on it,” the diplomat said.

• Reuters
• © Larry Downing LSD / MMR

The Ukrainian ambassador to the United States added that over four years at the UN, his country “managed to gain credibility” and form a “powerful group of friends”, which is “extremely important for confronting Russian aggression." He referred to the European friends the countries of the European Union, as well as the “strategic partners” - the United States and Great Britain, which, in his opinion, after leaving the EU began to take an even more principled position on the Ukrainian issue.

Director of the Institute for Contemporary State Development Dmitry Solonnikov believes that Yelchenko has no evidence of his accusations against Russian diplomats and UN staff. Otherwise, he would have provided them immediately.

The expert also believes that the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States is hardly knowledgeable about the working methods of the diplomatic corps of the Russian Federation and Russian special services. The analyst believes that Yelchenko made his conclusions by simply transferring knowledge about the activities of Ukrainian diplomats to another country.

“Knowing well how the work of Ukrainian diplomats is organized, he can quite logically assume that in other countries it is the same as in his homeland. The Russian side needs to pay minimal attention to such statements on the part of Ukraine, not to notice what the inadequate Ukrainian politicians, diplomats, public workers say, ”Solonnikov believes.

Recall, Vladimir Yelchenko was appointed to the post of ambassador to the United States on December 18, 2019. In the period from 2010 to 2015, he served as ambassador of Ukraine to Russia. In 2015, he was appointed Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN, and also worked as Ambassador of Ukraine to Jamaica.

His statements are not the first such accusations by the Ukrainian side against workers of Russian diplomatic missions.

In August 2019, Ukraine declared persona non grata a diplomat of the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Lviv, accusing him of fulfilling intelligence tasks of the Russian special services. According to the SBU, the Russian diplomat allegedly recruited a military pensioner who collected intelligence information about political and public figures, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, special and law enforcement agencies, foreign military instructors in the western region of the country.

The Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized that there was no evidence of the unlawful activity of a diplomat of the Russian Federation, as usual.

In this regard, Moscow called the actions of Kiev an unfriendly and unmotivated step, and as a mirror measure declared persona non grata an employee of the Consulate General of Ukraine in St. Petersburg.