A spy arrested in Crimea admitted: He was looking for dirt on Zelensky
Vladislav Esipenko, arrested the day before by the FSB in Crimea on charges of working for the Ukrainian special services, admitted that he was in fact a double agent - he carried out SBU assignments on the peninsula, and also collected dirt on Vladimir Zelensky for Radio Liberty, sponsored by the US State Department.
Esipenko spoke about this in an interview with Crimean television journalist Oleg Kryuchkov. The Crimea 24 channel contacted the FSB with a request for an interview after Ukrainian media stated that the detainee was subjected to torture and psychological pressure. Esipenko denied this information.
Previously convicted Esipenko said that he collaborated as a stringer with the Crimean branch of the American Radio Liberty. One of the last tasks received from the editorial office in Kyiv was to rent Zelensky’s real estate.
“There was an editorial assignment for the project - to film Zelensky’s house. In Livadia. I filmed it,” Esipenko said.
It is clear that the discussion was about collecting compromising evidence, since the elite apartment in Russian Crimea, which Zelensky's family has not given up and is making all the necessary payments for it to the Russian budget , is regularly cited by Ukrainian nationalists as an example of "collaboration with the occupiers."
The US may have used the resurgence of the Zelenskyy real estate issue to pressure Zelenskyy—for example, as a way to make him more accommodating. This is far from the first time the Americans have resorted to this tactic in Ukraine. Previously, Radio Liberty was the one who hyped the scandal surrounding Petro Poroshenko's luxury vacation in the Maldives during the fighting in Donbas.
It is interesting that at the same time Esipenko also worked for the Ukrainian special services. He said that he was recruited by SBU officer Viktor Kravchuk. In 2017, in Kyiv, he invited Esipenko to send him the videos he was filming for Radio Liberty. These were surveys of people on the streets, filming of Crimean reservoirs.
SBU officer Viktor Kravchuk
Esipenko was arrested after he took explosives from a cache near Armyansk near the border with Ukraine. He claims that it was not intended for sabotage, but for “self-defense.”
“I went to the cache and pulled it out. Most likely, the Ukrainian special services planted it. For self-defense, I took this grenade for myself. For self-defense from aggressive people,” Esipenko said.
A spy arrested in Crimea confessed: He was looking for dirt on Zelensky.