Replies

A few other interesting lines from the article...

Far behind the scenes, Col. Gen. Ihor P. Smeshko, the S.B.U. chief, was coordinating several of the contacts, according to Maj. Gen. Vitaly Romanchenko, leader of the military counterintelligence department, who said that on the spy chief's orders he warned General Popkov to stop. The Interior Ministry called off its alarm.

Details of these exchanges, never before reported, provide insight into a hidden factor in the so-called Orange Revolution, the peaceful protests that overturned an election and changed the political course of a post-Soviet state.

Throughout the crisis an inside battle was waged by a clique of Ukraine's top intelligence officers, who chose not to follow the plan by President Leonid D. Kuchma's administration to pass power to Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovich, the president's chosen successor. Instead, these senior officers, known as the siloviki, worked against it.

Such a position is a rare occurrence in former Soviet states, where the security agencies have often been the most conservative and ruthless instruments of state power.

Interviews with people involved in these events - opposition leaders, chairmen of three intelligence agencies and several of their senior officers, Mr. Kuchma, a senior Western diplomat, members of Parliament, the interior minister and commander of the ministry's troops - offer a view of the siloviki's work.

The officers funneled information to Mr. Kuchma's rivals, provided security to opposition figures and demonstrations, sent choreographed public signals about their unwillingness to follow the administration's path and engaged in a psychological tug-of-war with state officials to soften responses against the protests.

Ultimately, the intelligence agencies worked - usually in secret, sometimes in public, at times illegally - to block the fraudulent ascension of Mr. Yanukovich, whom several of the generals loathe. Directly and indirectly, their work supported Viktor A. Yushchenko, the Western-oriented candidate who is now the president-elect.

Many factors that sustained the revolution that formed around Mr. Yushchenko are well known. They include Western support, the protesters' resolve, cash from wealthy Ukrainians, coaching by foreign activists who had helped topple presidents in Georgia and Serbia, the unexpected independence of the Supreme Court and cheerleading by a television station, Channel 5, which Mr. Kuchma never shut down.

Each influenced the outcome to various degrees. None by itself seems decisive. The full extent of the siloviki's role is unknown, although Oleg Ribachuk, Mr. Yushchenko's chief of staff, called it "a very important element" that aided the opposition "professionally and systemically."

"They were doing this like a preventive operation," he said.