SBU busts huge arms smuggling channel, accuses ex-top spy Yakymenko of running it (VIDEO)

Kyiv Post ^ | May 26, 2014, 4:07 p.m. | Mark Rachkevych

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Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) is accusing its former chief, Oleksandr Yakymenko, of being behind an arms smuggling plot that it busted on May 25. In the operation, 73 crates of weapons were seized that were shipped by sea from Sevastopol in Russia-occupied Crimea to Berdyansk district in Zaporizhya Oblast.

Yakymenko, who is wanted by authorities for mass murder during EuroMaidan, couldn’t be reached for comment, and he is believed to be hiding out in Russia where he has given interviews to Russian media.

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Ex-President Viktor Yanukovych appointed him the nation’s top spy on Jan. 9, 2013. He was the first deputy head of the SBU and headed its corruption and organized crime fighting department since July 5, 2012. Before that, he headed the Donetsk Oblast SBU department from Aug. 5, 2011. Soon after his inauguration in 2010, Yanukovych appointed him the head of the SBU department in Sevastopol on March 18 of that year.

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After graduation, he served in Mongolia and in Crimea. In 1997 Yakymenko graduated from the Yuri Gagarin Air Force Academy in Russia, but resigned from the Russian Air Force in 1998.

His official SBU biography never stated when and if he received Ukrainian citizenship.

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Circumstances appear to indicate Yanukovych planted a Russian military spy into the Ukrainian SBU as its chief in cooperation with Putin's anti-Ukrainian intelligence operations in the Ukraine.