You're traveling abroad. Whether it's for tourism, business, or at the invitation of a private individual, be prepared for any unexpected events: the Russian security services likely know everything about your trip.
Date of departure from Ukraine and arrival in the country that issued the visa, departure/arrival airport (train station), if driving – vehicle details and probable point of entry into Ukraine. Duration of trip. Purpose of trip. Who will be the host. Places of stay abroad. Hotels.
Your personal passport information (domestic and international passports), the passport information of the host (if you are traveling on a private invitation), and health insurance. Your bank accounts and the amounts in them. Your place of work, position, and contact information. Your home address. Family composition. Information about your real estate—in Ukraine and abroad. The purpose of the business trip and who the host is. And so on.
This is invaluable information for any intelligence agency in the world. Especially for the intelligence agencies of a terrorist state like Russia. With this information, the FSB and GRU can plan any operation against you: robbery, compromise, blackmail, coercion into cooperation, recruitment, kidnapping, and even murder. For a state that kidnaps Ukrainian citizens and takes them hostage to Russia, this is common practice. If they don't get you, they'll get your family and friends. Whatever it takes.
Abroad, it's much easier to do all this to you than in Ukraine, where in case of imminent danger, you can turn to law enforcement, or at least to a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, for help. Abroad, this will be much more difficult—especially since the intelligence agencies themselves will set the "rules of the game" with you, since they already have all the information they need.
Russia is at war with Ukraine. And Ukrainian citizens are merely targets for Russian intelligence services, and they will act solely based on expediency and the value of your person to them.
Where can Russian intelligence agencies get this information?
At the Visa Application Centre in Ukraine, which Russian intelligence services appear to have had complete control over for a long time.
Back in 2012, we wrote: Ukraine: A Country Like a Walk-In. Little has changed in this regard since then.
Yesterday's news that an offshore company with Russian roots had monopolized visa center services in Ukraine didn't disturb anyone in the government. There were zero comments. Meanwhile, this represents a strategic failure for the Ukrainian security services and a blow to the foundations of national security.
However, the Presidential Administration and the Cabinet of Ministers may think differently: since neither Poroshenko's nor Yatsenyuk's entourage can profit from this, the problem isn't worth a damn.
How is everything really?
So, a private company that acts as an intermediary in providing visa services to citizens in Ukraine is registered to a front man. This was revealed by an investigation by the newspaper "Express."
Information on the website where citizens register for visas indicates that visa services in Ukraine are supposedly provided by "VFS Global Services." Indeed, "VFS Global Services" is a world-renowned company, providing visa services in 124 countries. Its founder is the respected Swiss Kuoni Group, whose shares are traded on the stock exchange.
However, as journalists have discovered, VFS Global does not operate in Ukraine. Instead, visa services are provided under this brand by a private enterprise, "Visa Service Center." The ultimate beneficiary of this Ukrainian private enterprise is not VFS Global Services, but—through numerous legal intermediaries—an offshore company on the Caribbean island of Curaçao.
Express also established that the nominal ultimate owner of the Visa Service Center, as well as the enterprise on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, is listed in the registers as a Latvian citizen of Russian origin, Jurijs Baikovs, who resides in Riga.
The publication's journalists contacted his father, who lives in a prefabricated apartment building in Riga, and Baikovs himself, a migrant worker who (according to his father) works as a driver at London Airport. Both spoke unaccented Russian. Baikovs did not deny his connection to the company but declined to answer more detailed questions.
As a reminder, Polish experts previously discovered that a sister company to the Swiss company VFS Global, which won the tender to operate visa application centers in Belarus, has ties to former Soviet KGB officials, as reported by wРolityce.pl.
This same "Belarusian" VFS Global turned out to be closely connected to the VF Worldwide Holdings alliance, which won a similar tender in Lithuania. This sparked a major scandal in that country. A special investigative commission is investigating the incident. Lithuanian media have detailed the life stories of the two company owners—brothers, former Moscow KGB functionaries.
The Polish publication is alarmed: "These data indicate that a KGB-linked company is about to gain control of the Polish visa application system. The resulting threats are obvious."
Experts also point to this, noting that there is no information about VFS Global's personal data protection standards. The selection criteria for employees handling and managing personal data are also unknown.
However, the beneficiaries of the commercial structure that controls the visa sector in Belarus and Lithuania are known—they are former KGB officers, Polish experts note. And, as is well known, there are no former officers in the KGB (or its successor, the FSB).
How did it happen that visa support in Ukraine is handled by a company that's a lookalike of the world-famous VFS Global—right under the noses of Ukraine's secret services? Who in the Cabinet of Ministers was responsible for granting this particular company the right to serve Ukrainian citizens? Who organized the tender that resulted in the winner being a company that's a "friend of the Chekist"?
Why didn't the SBU prevent this situation? Why are journalists, and not the intelligence agencies, tasked with identifying so-called "legendary firms" that pose a threat to national security? Does the SBU even understand that the very existence of such a "visa center" is a massive failure of the Service's work? And blaming the "predecessors" is pointless: almost two years have passed since the defection of Yanukovych's FSB gang.
There are questions for both the Cabinet of Ministers and the National Security and Defense Council: a swift, effective, and public response to the situation is needed. This is a matter of the physical safety of hundreds of thousands of people.
And to remain silent about this problem is to give another gift to the enemy.
—
Konstantin Ivanchenko, Argument
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