Original: Strategic Culture Foundation
Translated by Alexander Fedotov

Klim Chugunkin¹ and other heroes of the diplomacy of the ‘Independent’

By Dmitry Artemov| 10.03.2016 | 00:00

Every time after another anti-Russian escapades in Kiev, one asks himself: ‘What kind of diplomats work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?’ What kind of Minister of Foreign Affairs would publicly support ‘peaceful actions’ of throwing Molotov cocktails, flares and stones at the building of the Russian diplomatic mission? Who are representatives of international organizations, broadcasting the frank nonsense and lying into the eyes of the world? What kind of human rights activists would demand the immediate release of a war criminal?

Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has long proved itself as a willing and furious conductor of Russophobian, pro-American policies. However, this policy is anti-Ukrainian as well. And many of its executioners are direct agents of influence of the foreign states. The West, to its credit, for many years cultivated Russophobic flock for the building on Mikhailovsky Square (where the Foreign Ministry of the ‘Independent’ [nickname for Ukraine from Ukrainian Незалежна] is located in the former dwelling of the city committee of the Communist Party and the Central Committee of Ukrainian Komsomol). Take, for example, a biography of the current Minister. Among subordinates, he has a nickname Klim Chugunkin that is widely dispersed over the social networks.

Let us recall a character of Bulgakov’s ‘Heart of a Dog’ who was short, poorly built, with enlarged liver (alcohol)… During the experiment, Klim’s pituitary and seminal glands were transplanted to a dog called Sharik and … a monster had grown. How is it related to a notorious Russophobe-nationalist Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs? The answers are in his biography.

A diligent schoolboy from Kursk was once enrolled in an elite college – at the Department of Aero-Physics and Space Research of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology with a major in Physics and Applied Mathematics. He graduated from college in the same year as the collapse of the Soviet Union and was seconded to Kiev, to E. O. Paton Electric Welding Institute, a then closed scientific institution involved in the implementation of many unique defence programs. There are pieces of evidence that the Moscow secret services warned their Kiev colleagues: ‘Be vigilant with the intern. There are suspicions that in his senior years at MIPT he was recruited by the CIA’.

In the era of the total disruption, crash of the economy and at the time when Western intelligence generals became advisors to the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, no one paid attention to such a small fry as Pasha [short for Pavel –trans.] Klimkin. The scandal broke only a couple of years later, when the head of the Institute of Electric Welding and president of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Boris Paton was surprised to discover that someone was actively stealing results of their development works and selling them to the West. In particular the unique technology of welding in a vacuum, which was proven for the first time in the space orbit by the Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, and other know-how. They started to be actively patented … by American citizens in the United States.

Particular perpetrators were not found then, but a circle of suspects was established. One of the first on the list was a talented young physicist ‘from Moscow’ – Pasha Klimkin. However, instead of a jail he, somehow, miraculously appeared in the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, albeit at a lower position of attaché. He was taken there by the Head of Information Department Yuriy Sergeyev. Klimkin was then quickly forgotten and he soon departed for the Ukrainian embassy in Germany to deal with scientific and technical problems. They say he was missing from work for weeks and sometimes for a whole month. German curators of the embassy were reassuring, saying that the prospective member of staff was being trained on special courses. What was that training we can only guess today but soon Western diplomats and politicians at top-level negotiations began to advise their Ukrainian partners to look closely at the young and promising diplomatic cadre. And with the advent of Yushchenko [President of Ukraine 2005—2010 –trans.] the career of Klimkin went sharply up the hill. He was appointed the Director of the European Department in the same ministry. When Yanukovych [President of Ukraine 2010—2014 –trans.] came to Bankova [a street in Kiev where the Presidential Administration of Ukraine is located –trans.], he immediately (tipped by the American ambassador in Kiev) raised Pasha to the rank of… Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs responsible for all international contacts with the West. Klimkin is one of the co-authors of Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement. Or more precisely one of the couriers delivering these papers, composed by Washington and Brussels, to Yanukovych.

Pasha found for himself, among those fed by the US grants, a young assistant, namely Natalia Galibarenko. After some time she was sent on an internship in Brussels for many months; from there she returned to Kiev to Yushchenko administration to coordinate the Euro-Atlantic direction of politics. Then all of a sudden the 35-year-old brunette became the first Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine! Of course, to Minister Klimkin. The world’s most popular media recently told about a bright and extraordinary diplomatic talent of this lady. It was she who received a new assignment as an ambassador to the UK to appear at the presentation of credentials to the Queen in a lurid yellow-bluish dress with a degenerative cap on her head. These images became the top-end both in the media and the Internet. According to the numerous testimonies of the participants of that event, the new chief of the Ukrainian embassy in London behave at the reception with the Queen familiarly vulgar, loudly screaming while cursing … her own government.

However, these young professionals cannot be compared to the old guard of the Ukrainian diplomatic service. And first of all to Yuri Anatolyevich Sergeyev who until recently was the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations. The boorish speeches and lies of this gentleman, his attempts to silence others during discussions become a feature of the current diplomacy of the ‘Independent’. In one of his application forms this ‘patriot-nationalist’, as Sergeev describes himself, under the column “Languages” wrote with his own hand: ‘English, Russian, French’. For a man with a Russian surname who was born in the Armenian SSR to the family of a Soviet officer it sounds really cool. However, Sergeyev, like all Kiev’s traitors, does not like when someone digs into his biography and asks uncomfortable questions like: ‘Which special faculty of Kiev Frunze Higher All-Army College (better known as the School of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR) did Yuriy Sergeyev graduate from?’ Or:’When and where did Sergeev join the ranks of the Communist Party?’ It does sound interesting, doesn’t it?

Most of his conscious life Sergeyev served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, actively developed cooperation with Russia and was friends with Grigory Karasin [a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia –trans.] when they were both the heads of the information departments in ministries of their countries. Kuchma [President of Ukraine 1994—2005 –trans.] noticed Yury Anatolievich at the time. He appointed him first a First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, then a head of Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration. That time Sergeyev, however, did not consider Russian as a foreign language. Quite the contrary, at all briefings and interviews he emphasised that we [Russians and Ukrainians –trans.] – one nation, living in the two brotherly countries.

Unlike many colleagues, Yuri Sergeyev did not take bribes for employing children of oligarchs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Institute of International Relations and the Diplomatic Academy, did not rob Ukrainian consulate imposing dues… No, he was considered a quiet and calm person, a typical representative of his profession. And suddenly the man burst. But where, in the United Nations! Some media even then already wrote that furious Russophobic speeches for Ukrainian envoy were composed in the US State Department and brought ‘prêt à porter’ to the poor grey mansion of Ukrainian permanent mission located not far from the East River. And Mr Serhij (as in the Ukrainian style Americans write his surname), who has a thorough knowledge of Russian as a foreign language, has a pension in the United States and is given to lifelong use a cottage on Long Island in New York. They wrote that his wife Natalia started to be regularly met in the New York fashion furniture showrooms between the 31th and 39th Avenues in New Jersey. They wrote and were not mistaken. Only Mr Serhij is not considering to retire.

According to the official representatives of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they wanted to offer Sergeyev the position of first Deputy Minister. He held it, by the way, under Kuchma. But Yuriy Anatolievich made a typical for him trick. He arrived to Kiev only for three days. During this time, he managed to write and leave hif application for retirement – he just knocked 60. He met with his old patron Leonid Danilovich [Kuchma –trans.], as the official website of Kuchma’s Fund reported. And again, he left for New York. From over there he began to publicly accuse … Klimkin and the company of incompetence; that they underestimated his, Sergeyev’s, talents; that they kept him in ‘salle d’attente’ for weeks; that they did not offer him any job, even in teaching. Even Ukrainian Foreign Ministry did not expect such arrogance from Sergeyev. Therefore, they began to make excuses that no one held Sergeyev in receptions. They published a photocopy of his diplomatic passport in which, actually, only three days passed between the entry to and exit from the ‘Independent’ stamps. In addition, it was unearthed that two months prior to his resignation from the post of Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations due to the retirement Mr. Serhij signed a contract with Yale University. Now he is a professor in this famous forge of American government class, which is also associated with long-term activity of powerful Masonic Lodge. Sergeyev-Serhij recently, as if mocking his recent accomplices, wrote in Twitter: he has a celebration – his first lecture to students at Yale.

Betrayal is a quality inherent to many politicians and diplomats of the ‘Independent’. They always easy change their beliefs, bosses, political parties, flags and etc. Many members of the first wave of Ukrainian diplomacy graduated in the Soviet era from closed universities of KGB systems and Ministry of Defense of the USSR. For example, Valentin Nalyvaychenko, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, later a chief of junta’s Security Services and one of the founders of the extremist organization “Right Sector” was a student of Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute of KGB. It is known that he was recruited by the CIA during the years of work in the Ukrainian embassy in the US. And now Americans consider him as one of the likely candidates for the chair Poroshenko who already bored everyone.

A Russophobe Boris Tarasyuk worked as an instructor of the International Relations Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party – the Minister of Foreign Affairs under Yushchenko and now a member of Parliament from Tymoshenko’s party. Vladimir Ogryzko was a secretary of Party [Communist –trans.] Bureau in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR [Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine] ; he is also a Russophobe and was a former Minister of the ‘Independent’. He entered into the modern Ukrainian history by the concept of ‘ Ogryzko’s diplomacy” for the demand to declare persona non grata Viktor Chernomyrdin during his appointment as the Russian ambassador in Kiev.

Vladimir Elchenko who replaced Yuriy Sergeyev at the UN is no less colourful. He is in the best traditions of Kiev began his work in New York with Russophobian statements, demands of release of military criminal Savchenko and appeals to send UN troops in Donbass. Elchenko himself is a son of former Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine on ideology; he graduated from the prestigious in the Soviet times MGIMO [Moscow State Institute of International Relations –trans.]. Final year thesis of Vladimir Yurevich at the Moscow university called ‘The role of the Party [Communist –trans.]offices in organising of current activities of the consular offices of the Soviet Union abroad’. In 2015, Vladimir Elchenko, then an ambassador of the ‘Independent’ in the Russian Federation, together with the other Russophobe then Minister Andrei Deshchitsa actively participated in the first attack on the Russian embassy in Kiev. Both are remembered because the couple bawled under the camera obscene couplets to the President of Russia.

Such are, so to speak, the diplomats who maintain in Ukraine the foreign policy of their American puppet masters. Is it worth to wonder that they by personal participation support rioters at the Russian embassy in Kiev.