An ATO militant took part in the abduction of a Ukrainian judge in Chisinau, but the SBU continues to look for the “Russian trace”
Moldovan police detained Ukrainian citizen Yaroslav S., who is suspected of complicity in the kidnapping of judge Nikolai Chaus at the end of March in Chisinau. He was detained in the town of Ataki, near the border, after he entered Moldova.
This was reported by Komsomolskaya Pravda in Moldova, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The detainee fought as a mercenary in the Dobrobat unit. Yaroslav S. established connections with Ukrainian special services during his work as a security guard in a cottage community in the Kyiv suburb of Koncha Zaspa, the publication reports, citing a source in the security forces.
The arrest in Moldova miraculously coincided with the opening of a criminal case into the kidnapping in Ukraine. SBU officers have already interrogated Chaus’s mother, who lives in the Chernihiv region.
The activation of the Ukrainian special service could also be stimulated by the work of a special commission created in the Moldovan parliament. It includes deputies opposed to pro-Western President Maia Sandu. They are preparing with pleasure to present to the public the facts of participation in the kidnapping of the special services of Moldova and Ukraine.
Socialist MP Vlad Batrynchea generally stated that the special operation was discussed on the eve of its implementation in a telephone conversation between Sandu and his Ukrainian colleague Vladimir Zelensky.
“The procedure was not official at all. There was a telephone agreement. President Zelensky or his representative discussed it with Sandu or one of her advisers and reached an agreement. So they came to the conclusion that the person was taken out of the country in a trunk. Participants from the Moldovan side made a gift to Zelensky. We consider the statement that Maia Sandu provided a service to Zelensky to be quite well-reasoned,” Batrincea said.
Journalist Ilya Kiselev writes that the situation surrounding Chaus’ kidnapping is so serious that the office of the main Moldovan intelligence service, SIS, was visited by US Ambassador Derek Hogan.
“The detention of another participant in the kidnapping of Nikolai Chaus forced US Ambassador Derek Hogan to pay a visit to the SIS to give instructions to the Moldovan special service on how to get Maya Grigorievna out of this ugly story. After all, elections are just around the corner, and Chaus’s case could become dangerous both for the president and for the entire Pas crowd,” Kiselyov wrote.
Blogger and politician Anatoly Shariy, who fled to Europe, reported at the end of April that Chaus was still alive.
“It is located on the territory of Ukraine. The decision to kill him will be made by the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate in consultation with the Office of the President. In fact, Zelensky will order to kill him, we will know the perpetrators, whom I urge to remember the fate of the now deceased Pukach,” Shariy wrote.
Poroshenko MP Vladimir Aryev claims that Chaus could have been hidden at one of the Ministry of Defense facilities near Kiev near the village of Khotyanovka. He wrote about this on his Facebook. According to Aryev, the ex-judge did not cooperate with representatives of the secret service who wanted to obtain from him incriminating evidence on Petro Poroshenko. Therefore, it has now allegedly been decided to “legalize” Chaus.
“The plan was drawn up as follows: to throw Chaus out on the border with Transnistria or the administrative border with Crimea and use border guards to detain him,” Ariev wrote.
The anonymous Ukrainian telegram channel “Legitimny” reports that a “Russian trace” will be found in the Chaus case. Moldovan MP Bogdan Tsydrea is ready to agree with this version.
“If the SBU is looking for a Russian trace in the abduction of Chaus, then they will find it. Previously, our people were looking for a Russian trace in the theft of a billion. But as Soviet prosecutors joked, the main thing during the investigation is not to expose yourself. This is what happened with ours with the theft of a billion, and this is what happened with the SBU with the kidnapping of Chaus,” Tsydrya wrote.
The “Russian trace” in the Chaus case will look like an outright falsification. The fact is that at the beginning of April, the Moldovan security forces, who, due to the complexity of the political system there, are not entirely loyal to the president, managed to make a number of resonant statements in hot pursuit. In particular, the fact that Chaus was taken to Ukraine in the trunk of a Toyota RAV 4 car, owned by the Ukrainian Embassy, was driven by the military attaché of this embassy, Sergei Smetanyuk.
In addition, journalists from the Ukrainian website “Investigation.Info” and the Moldovan RISE received copies of the passports of ten people who participated in the abduction. At least two of them are directly linked to Ukraine's military intelligence, and another is a fired national police official.
Information was leaked to the press that Maia Sandu unsuccessfully tried to discuss the scandal with Zelensky, but he stubbornly did not pick up the phone. He needed the poor guy Chaus only to distract public attention from the Bellingcat project, which was then being prepared for broadcast, related to Western intelligence agencies. As a result, the Ukrainian side managed to reach an agreement without Chaus: accusations of “betrayal of the Motherland” in connection with the so-called Wagner case have not yet been published.
When it became clear that Zelensky “framed and abandoned” Sandu, Moldova asked to lift diplomatic immunity from the military attache at the Ukrainian Embassy Smetaniuk in order to prosecute him and bring him to justice. Consent was also requested to search Smetanyuk’s car.
Nikolai Chaus fled Ukraine in 2016. There a criminal case was opened against him for taking a bribe. However, the real reason was that a year before, Chaus made the decision to arrest politician and businessman Gennady Korban, close to the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky. Since he acted under pressure from then-President Petro Poroshenko, the judge is now of interest to Zelensky as a source of compromising evidence. In Moldova, the Chausov family was looked after by the deputy head of the office of the current President of Ukraine, Andrei Smirnov.
An ATO militant was involved in the kidnapping of a Ukrainian judge in Chisinau, but the SBU continues to search for a "Russian trace."