Myrotvorets Center, a website allegedly connected to Ukrainian security agencies, has added the names of signatories to a controversial peace plan for Ukraine to its database of people it claims have committed crimes against the country.
The list includes former top American, British and European officials, as well as several Russians and three Ukrainians. The site accuses them of “impingement on the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Ukraine.
Myrotvorets’ database is effectively a list of “enemies of Ukraine.” Many people on the list end up being officially banned from entering the country.
The website is widely recognized as tied to the law enforcement or security agencies, although none have ever admitted a connection. Anton Herashchenko, a longtime advisor and deputy of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, has been the most avid proponent of the anonymous website.
The former officials in question participated in the creation of a 12-step peace plan for Ukraine that was unveiled on Feb. 14 during the Munich Security Conference. The plan proved controversial in Ukraine both for the involvement of members of the Russian International Affairs Council and the contents of its recommendations.
A group of American experts and diplomats quickly criticized the plan, saying that several of its recommendations “echo Kremlin negotiating proposals or disinformation themes.”
However, Myrotvorets’ decision to add the signatories to its database could prove a provocative move.
Among people involved in the peace plan are former top-level officials from countries Ukraine considers important allies. Many were in public office not long ago, are known to support Ukraine and have extensive connections in their respective capitals.
Who’s who
Out of 46 signatories, the Kyiv Post was able to find all but 13 in the Myrotvorets database. They were added between Feb. 14 and 15.
However, many of the signatories’ names were only spelled out in Ukrainian or Russian and the transcription from these languages. Unlike in many Myrotvorets entries on foreigners, their names were often not listed in English or their native languages.
Among the former top officials added to the database was retired General Philip Mark Breedlove, formerly NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander for Europe in 2013-2016.
Most recently, in September, Breedlove spoke at the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv. He has been openly critical of Russia’s actions in Ukraine and, in 2015, expressed support for Washington providing Kyiv with lethal aid to defend itself from Russia. The U.S. would eventually provide Ukraine with this aid.
Breedlove also sits on the board of directors of the Atlantic Council, the think tank which published the criticism of the 12-step peace plan.
Myrotvorets also added retired U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, NATO’s former Supreme Allied Commander for Europe in 2009-2013. In an October 2019 op-ed for Bloomberg, Stavridis stressed the geopolitical importance of Ukraine and called on the U.S. not to abandon its support for the country over its frustration with the Trump impeachment scandal, in which Ukraine played a central role.
William J. Burns was also included in the database. A former U.S. ambassador to Russia in 2005-2008, Burns served as deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama in 2011-2014. He is currently the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C.
Myrotvorets also added James F. Collins, the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia in 1997-2001 and a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, to the database.
Brooke Anderson, a former U.S. ambassador and former chief of staff at the National Security Council in 2011-2012, was included.
Among the European diplomats and officials was Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference Foundation and a former German ambassador to the U.S. in 2001-2006, and Alexander Hug, the former deputy head of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine in 2014-2018.
Sir John Scarlett was also included. The retired British senior intelligence officer previously headed the British Secret Intelligence Service in 2004-2009.
Rolf Ekéus, the former Ambassador of Sweden to the U.S. in 1997-2000, and Bert Koenders, who served as Dutch foreign minister in 2014-2017, is also on the list, as is Hikmet Cetin, Turkey’s former foreign minister in 1991-1994.
Myrotvorets also targeted the three Ukrainian signatories to the peace plan: former diplomats Oleksandr Chalyi and Vasyl Filipchuk and foreign policy expert Oleksiy Semeniy.
Most predictably, the site placed the Russian signatories in its database: former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Yevgeny Buzhinskiy, Andrey Kortunov and Ivan Timofeev. The latter three hold top positions at the Russian International Affairs Council.
The other signatories included in the database are members of think tanks and nonprofits focused on issues ranging from international affairs to humanitarian de-mining.
Unpopular plan
The controversial peace plane — called “Twelve Steps Towards Greater Security in Ukraine and the Euro-Atlantic Region” — is the result of so-called track II diplomacy, contacts often between non-state actors with ties to governments that allow them to work outside official negotiations.
As a result, the 12 steps represent recommendations and are not legally binding.
The peace plan provoked outrage in Ukraine. Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly rejected it, saying it does not “correspond with the official position of the Ukrainian state,” and that the government “does not recognize this statement as the official document of the (Munich Security) Conference.”
On Feb. 15, President Volodymyr Zelensky commented on the plan — albeit somewhat indirectly — during a panel discussion featuring conference chairman Ischinger, who signed the peace plan.
“I am always a bit offended…when (other countries) start talking about Ukraine and resolving our problems behind our backs,” he said, according to the Hromadske media outlet. “In Munich, they found a new plan to regulate the war in Ukraine’s east. And us? It’s us who are at war. I just want to remind you that you can ask us.”
Even the Munich conference appears to regret the plan. They briefly removed it from the conference’s website, and an unnamed organizer told Hromadske that he or she felt “guilt” for its publication.
But that didn’t stop Myrotvorets from adding the plan’s signatories to its database. The organization has previously found itself in hot water for targeting foreigners on dubious charges.
In May 2016, the website provoked outrage by publishing the names of 4,500 international and Ukrainian journalists who received press accreditation from the Russia-backed fighters controlling parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk Oblast, accusing them of “cooperating with terrorists.”
That move brought the organization harsh criticism from the international press, the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe and Reporters Without Borders, who alleged it put the journalists’ lives at risk.
In 2019, during the presidential campaign, the site also published what it claimed was evidence that the Zelensky campaign had received financing from the Russian security service and a Russian-backed militant who previously fought in Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk Oblast.
In comments to the Kyiv Post at the time, several experts on disinformation questioned whether the evidence — several vague emails — was strong enough to make such allegations.
Myrotvorets claims to be run by anonymous volunteers, but both Interior Minister Avakov and his advisor Herashchenko have vocally defended the site and its actions.
