From EIR: Who Is Arsen Avakov?

Aug. 14—Arsen Avakov, the man whom the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has stated is the current preferred U.S. option for replacing Volodymyr Zelenskyy as President of Ukraine is the former Minister of Internal Affairs for Ukraine, who oversaw the creation of the avowedly neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and equally neo-Nazi Myrotvorets kill list, during his long reign as Internal Affairs Minister from 2014 until July 2021. This neo-Nazi was protected and promoted throughout that period by the U.S. government, with the State Department’s Victoria “Maidan coup” Nuland and then-FBI Director Christopher Wray leading the way.

EIR identified Avakov’s ties to the FBI in its August 26, 2022 release, “Azov Brigade’s Godfather and Protector of Myrotvorets Website Has a Deal with FBI.” Avakov, “before becoming the Interior Minister of former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s famous Prime Minister Arseniy ‘Yats’ Yatsenyuk, was an ‘honored economist’ in the banking sector,” EIR noted. "Following the 2014 ‘revolution,’ Avakov was appointed Acting Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. In that capacity he met CIA chief John Brennan in May 2014….

“Avakov admitted he was involved in the creation of Azov in 2014. It was under his orders that the battalion was integrated into the National Guard. Several veterans of the Azov regiment were placed by Avakov in important positions in his ministry….

“In 2018, Avakov was received by members of the U.S. Congress, both by Republican Devin Nunes (CA) as head of the House Intelligence Committee, and by the very naïve progressive Democrat Marcy Kaptur (OH). As proudly announced on the website of the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior, during this visit Avakov also met with FBI Director Christopher Wray and signed a ‘Memorandum on Mutual Cooperation with the Director of the U.S.A. Federal Bureau of Investigation Christopher Wray. The document concerns cooperation on combating cybercrime and organized crime.’”

Avakov proudly posted photos of himself chumming it up with Nuland when she visited Kyiv, and his meeting with Wray to sign the agreement to strengthen the FBI’s role in his Interior Ministry. The agreement “will help radically improve the exchange of information and mutual access to technical capabilities of both agencies,” Avakov wrote at the time. “With the FBI director, we have discussed some threats that come to us from the Putin regime. We have formed a joint plan that will allow us to fight against Russian aggression.”

At the time of this “joint plan,” Avakov’s special advisor was Anton Gerashchenko, well-known for his continuing role in the Myrotvorets kill list which he initiated in 2014 as Avakov’s advisor. Myrotvorets publicly fingers opponents of neo-Nazi Ukrainians for “liquidation.” Gerashchenko would be promoted to Deputy Internal Affairs Minister in September 2019, where he would serve until a month after Avakov left his post.