Former SBU Colonel Kryzhanovsky Suspected of Treason

Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office has officially charged former SBU colonel Valentin Kryzhanovsky with high treason. He was discharged from military service in the SBU in June 2005 due to health reasons.

After the full-scale invasion began, Kryzhanovsky stayed in the temporarily occupied settlements of Borodianka and Ivankiv in the Kyiv region. He detained Ukrainian citizens, conducted filtration measures, and interrogations. According to the investigation, he was interested in the locations of Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel, addresses of ATO participants, and members of the Azov regiment and National Guard.

The suspicion states that Kryzhanovsky convinced locals that "Russia is doing everything right," that a coup had occurred in Ukraine, and that Russians came to overthrow a fascist regime. He denied Russian war crimes, calling such information fabricated.

After the liberation of the Kyiv region, Kryzhanovsky left Ukraine with the Russian army and went to Moscow. He later moved to the temporarily occupied Donetsk region, where he acted as a negotiator and one of the organizers of prisoner exchanges. From May 1 to 19, 2022, he was at the Azovstal plant and met with the leadership of the Azov regiment. Investigators say he advised Ukrainian servicemen to disarm and surrender, and raised the USSR flag over one of the plant's buildings.

Earlier, in 2005, Kryzhanovsky was implicated in the illegal sale of a batch of zirconium and hafnium. In March 2005, he and an accomplice demanded $100,000 from a man, threatening physical harm and property destruction. After a criminal case was opened in 2005, he was on the international wanted list for over three years. In the summer of 2006, he was detained in Tver by Russian law enforcement at Ukraine's request but was not extradited. In 2009, he was detained in Ukraine. According to the new suspicion, knowing he was wanted in Ukraine, he requested political asylum in Russia and obtained a Russian passport.