Linas Jegelevičius
In 2017, when the annual Free Russia Forum commenced in Vilnius with the most prominent Russian opposition activists mingling in the front of TV cameras with A-tier Lithuanian politicians and, no one suspected that man, a professional GRU (Russia’s Chief Intelligence Office) assassin and mastermind of many headline-grabbing murders and blows-up in Western Europe, sat in the event within hand’s reach of Vytautas Landsbergis, the patriarch of Lithuania’s modern, post-1990 state, the President.
The Insider, which broke out the story, mentions that Ivan Zhigaryov, the man who had a photo of himself taken of sitting next to Landsbergis in the event, was also around Garis Kasparov, one of the leaders of the Russian opposition.
The outlet says Zhigaryov has carried out many GRU-orchestrated heinous missions, a large part of which were murders. Namely, he is said to have been friends with the poisoners of Sergei and his daughter Yulia Skripal. Their poisoning case is known as the Salisbury Poisonings, a botched assassination attempt. Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies in the city of Salisbury, England, and his daughter were poisoned with Novichok nerve agent and spent several weeks in hospital in a critical condition before being discharged.
The outlet also says Zhigaryov has been part of terrorist attacks in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, where ammunition depots were blown up.
Understandably, with the biography details neatly disguised
and replaced with an impressive CV as of a fierce activist of human rights, the Russian was also involved in the activities of a US-funded foundation in Russia, through which he received a recommendation to come to the Free Russia Forum in Vilnius in 2017, and also a Lithuanian visa.
“This is preposterous. On one hand, I understand that various security breaches happen and they are inevitable perhaps. As a politician, I am asked to have photos taken quite often. Even with someone I barely know, or I don’t now at all. Are you expecting me to check the person’s record at first or turn down the request, even if it comes from a decent looking person? I’d say ambiguous situations with the involvement of politicians in various photo-shoot settings crop up often. However, this one, involving the Professor (Vytautas Landsbergis – L.J.) is a different story. How on earth the person passed the scrutiny of Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD)? He did – the Department failed big time. The outcome of the failure could have been tragic for the Professor and the reputation of Lithuania,” Dainius Kepenis, a Lithuanian MP of the opposition Farmers and Greens Union (LVŽS), told BNN.
He believes that the VSD head should resign amid the revelation.
Kepenis also does not rule out that the ruling Homeland Union is using it as a part of the kicking-off its electoral campaigns – Lithuania will hold the presidential, EP and the parliamentary elections later this year.
Approached by BNN Audrius Butkevicius, the defence minister in the Cabinet of the first post-1990 Lithuanian Government, cracked a joke when asked to opine about the Landsbergis-next-to-assassin situation: “The Kremlin had decided not to waste Novichok nerve agent anymore.”
“If Russia had made up its mind clearly on the use in the case, it would have been used. And since it has not been used, I guess the Kremlin is not paying any attention to what the Landsbergis has to say,” he said.
Asked by tv3.lt to comment the revelation, V. Landsbergis was succinct: “Just because very bad people can be sent to those sit-ins, do we have not organize them or anything? I don’t think that there is a problem of such a magnitude and not let anyone from Russia – not a single one, because he could be a murderer – to participate does not sound right.”
He added: “Yes, we live in such a world, we have such a neighbour.”
The Insider publication was co-authored by famous investigative journalists, Michael Weiss, Christo Grozev and Roman Dobrokhotov, revealed the identities of several GRU agents who made name for themselves in a number of terrorist attacks in Europe.
Their report claims that Ivan Zhigaryov has changed his life story several times in his official biography. At some point of his life, he was a geologist looking for new water resources, afterwards he turned into a human rights activist who liked to be around opposition members who had emigrated from Russia.
Born and raised in the family of a Soviet officer in East Germany,
Ivan Zhigaryov served in the special forces of the Russian army. According to information gathered by The Insider, he has been traveling freely around the EU since at least 2015, where he had his paths crossed with the future poisoners of S. Skripal, A. Miškin and A. Čepiga, and with the latter he went on business trips to Munich and Berlin in 2016. Another two years later, he visited the French Alps, near the border with Switzerland and Italy, where the GRU had its secret base.
“As Russian military intelligence officers, they are dedicated to sabotage, poisoning, attacks on people and objects. I think this is the most dangerous moment in this entire history,” LRT.lt cited Nerijus Maliukevičius, an expert in information warfare.
According to him, Zhigaryov was trained to kill and in Vilnius he, probably, had the task of spying and gathering information about the Russian opposition.
“However, if Putin’s order had been much more serious, probably nobody would have stopped him,” he added.
The chairman of Lithuania’s National Security and Defence Committee of the Parliament (Seimas), Laurynas Kasčiūnas, says the omission of a potential killer on the guest list of the event is alarming.
“You let such people into your circle of participants. I see this also as the communication problem… there was a lack of scrutiny, evidently,” he said.
But are the Lithuanian institutions ready to prevent such cases now?
“The biggest problem is that Russian spies can easily get a Schengen visa anywhere in Europe, and with it, the way to Lithuania is also open…But we must not have allowed him to take part in this kind of event, prevent him from getting close to our leaders, the leaders of the Russian opposition, prevent sabotage”, L. Kasčiūnas maintains.
Ivan Tyutrin, one of the organizers of the Free Russia Forum told TV3 news that the organizers always check participants’ biographies, social network posts, and, according to him, Zhigaryov allegedly had all the recommendations.
“This person has been given a certain legend as of someone who had established himself in the ranks of activists quite a long time ago, several years before the forum. And when he submitted his application, he had some pretty solid recommendations. When we called and asked if there is such an activist, we got the answer: “Yes, there is such an activist,” Ivan Tyutrin explained.
Reportedly, Zhigaryov submitted two letters of recommendation.
Free Russia Forum records shared by The Insider show that the agent arrived in Vilnius on the 3rd of December by car together with two other Free Russia Forum participants, Ruslan Kambiev and Rasul Kataganov, human rights activists from the North Caucasus.
On the right Ruslan Kambiev, left Ivan Zhigaryov at Free Russia Forum in 2017. Photo: screenshot from a post on Instagram @kambirusAfter the first trip to Vilnius in 2017, Zhigaryov reportedly registered for the next five meetings of the Free Russia Forum, regularly asking for travel and hotel reimbursements, as well as letters of invitation to obtain a Schengen visa.
Despite never receiving a compensation, the GRU agent is said to have been able to regularly attend Free Russia Forum meetings in Vilnius and, in one of them, even signed up as a volunteer for three working groups, including the so-called “Putin’s List.” Its purpose was to establish a list of oligarchs and political cronies of the Russian regime to be subject to Western sanctions.
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