Why’d SVR Publish Its Prediction About An Impending Bureaucratic Reshuffle In Ukraine?

Russia’s foreign spy agency wanted to throw Zelensky into a dilemma by publishing this prediction instead of keeping it classified since it’ll either discredit or destabilize his regime depending on what he ultimately decides to do.

Russia’s SVR foreign spy agency predicted on Monday that Ukraine will soon undertake a bureaucratic reshuffling aimed at placing more pro-American figures in power. According to their press bureau, the Ukrainian Ambassador to the US might become Prime Minister while the Harvard-educated Deputy Finance Minister and Polish-educated Deputy Economic Minister might be promoted to full ministers. They also claimed that the US is blackmailing Zelensky to remove politically unreliable figures.

Their brief report conveys Russia’s assessment that Washington pulls all the strings in Kiev nowadays, even going as far as to explicitly describe the situation there as “an essentially colonial administration”. That in and of itself isn’t surprising, but what caught observers off guard was the specific predictions that this service made about Ukraine’s supposedly impending bureaucratic reshuffle, thus prompting the question of why they’d make this information public instead of keeping it classified.

By publishing their forecast, they indirectly wanted to reaffirm the relevance of their chief Sergey Naryshkin’s earlier related forecast from last month about how “high-ranking officials of leading Western countries are increasingly discussing among themselves the need to replace” Zelensky. That preceded an expert from the powerful Atlantic Council demanding that he form a “government of national unity” exactly one week later, all of which followed his latest trip to DC at the beginning of December.

The sequence of events from then till now suggests that the Ukrainian leader received a tongue-lashing in Washington but ultimately bowed to demands from his patrons to reshuffle his cabinet at some later date as a compromise for them calling off their possible plans to remove him through whatever means. Revealing the details of his impending personnel changes are therefore meant to highlight the degree of American influence over his administration while also discrediting those who he might soon appoint.

There’s also a chance that SVR wanted to pressure him into reconsidering those changes after their revelation out of concern that complying with them would confirm to everyone that he’s their puppet, in which case he might provoke his patrons’ ire if he delays or outright refuses these moves. Russia’s foreign spy agency therefore wanted to throw Zelensky into a dilemma by publishing this prediction since it’ll either discredit or destabilize his regime depending on what he ultimately decides to do.

This tactic cleverly forces him to choose between his personal dignity and personal security, with the former being sacrificed more than before if he complies with his patrons’ demands while the latter could be endangered if he defies them to “save face”. The resultant “reflexive control” is considered by US experts to be typical of the way in which Russian intel operates, and it’s not for nothing since the creation of such dilemmas leads to success no matter what.