Drugs, spies, the Serbian mafia

Cypriot mobster whacked. Vienna hit cancelled. Odessa-London narcotraffic.

Back in the 1950s, the CIA coordinated opium-laden planes across the world to fund proxy armies fighting communism in south-east Asia.

Today, America’s proxy army in Ukraine has its own intelligence service to do the drug-running.

This article’s main character is one of the top-ranking colonels in Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR). He has been photographed with Serbian mob bosses in Vienna, implicated in the assassination of a mafia godfather in Cyprus, and named as the organizer of international drug smuggling from the port of Odessa.

And that’s just in the past 90 days. A few years before that, he worked with the west Ukrainian mafia to kidnap a judge from Moldova

Lately, he’s also been dabbling in politics. Perhaps to an unhealthy degree.

Our spooklord has been scaring Zelensky by the emergence of his powerful youth-focused paramilitary and para-mafia organization. They’ve been able to mobilize hundreds not just in the name of the GUR, but also to intimidate Chechen organized crime networks working for the President’s Office.

Under our hero’s control is also an intelligence and covert operations unit filled with convicted murderers called ‘the X-men’. And, naturally, our colonel also works closely with pagan neo-nazis - where would be without them. Let’s take a look at this colorful character and rising star in Ukrainian court intrigues.