Ukraine – a country strenuously trying to remain neutral in the U.S. presidential race – has once again found itself in America’s headlines. Ukrainian MP Andrii Derkach, a KGB school alumnus formerly affiliated with the pro-Russian Party of Regions, promised to repay “DemoCorruption representatives” with “shocking revelations” about a series of US officials. Why? The US Department of the Treasury designated four Russia-linked individuals – including Mr. Derkach – for “attempting to influence the U.S. electoral process”.
Who is Andrii Derkach?
Andrii Derkach, a pro-Russian Ukrainian MP, has been one of the key figures promoting discredited allegations against former Vice President Biden and other Democratic officials in Ukraine.
From 1990 to 1993, Andrii Derkach studied at what is now the FSB Academy in Moscow.
In Ukraine, he served as an MP of six convocations, twice as the pro-Russian Party of Regions member. However, Mr. Derkach was an odd man out even then, feeling out of place in the group. It’s worth noting that he was the initiator of political projects like For the USSR in 2000 and To Europe with Russia in 2002, highlighting the politician’s core ideology.
Derkach’s curious background and work aimed at undermining the Democratic Party, including Mr. Biden, has landed the MP on Rudy Giuliani’s to-meet-in-Kyiv list. Andrii Derkach met with President Trump’s personal lawyer when the latter visited the capital of Ukraine in early December 2019, going as far as filming for Mayor Rudy’s Common Sense series. Mere two weeks before the said encounter, Derkach denied ever speaking to Giuliani after a brief introduction the two shared in 2003.
At a Ukrainian press conference on international corruption, Mr. Derkach told Apostrophe that he “met and talked to Rudy Giuliani only once – in 2003, at the opening of the Memorial for 9/11 Victims in Kyiv”. After that, he’s “never spoken to him nor seen him – except for TV”.
At the same time, Derkach has been long investigating “international corruption schemes”, especially targeting Petro Poroshenko, his team, the Democrats, and their alleged collusion.
Recently, Mr. Derkach has been actively leaking a series of audio recordings featuring voices that resemble the ones of Biden and Ukraine’s fifth president Petro Poroshenko. While intended to illustrate both Biden and Poroshenko’s corruption, the so-called Derkach tapes have offered nothing new to American voters. Now a presidential nominee, Barack Obama’s then-Vice President had already admitted – and even bragged about – his decisive role in the dismissal of Ukraine’s former Prosecutor General Shokin.
On September 11, 2020, Mr. Derkach announced his plans to release a new portion of documents allegedly incriminating a series of US officials and Biden specifically.
Additionally, the controversial politician called the US Department of the Treasury decision to include him in the sanctions list a “revenge of representatives of DemoCorruption in the person of Biden, Kent, and Kvien”.
“DemoCorruption officials are terrified. Because figures, documents, and exciting records support every word that will be voiced by me,” Derkach posted on his Facebook account.
New Sanctions List: What Does It Mean?
On September 10, the US Department of the Treasury designated Andrii Derkach “for his efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election”. Calling the Ukrainian MP “an active Russian agent”, Treasury highlighted its intent to send “a clear signal to Moscow and its proxies that this activity will not be tolerated”.
“From at least late 2019 through mid-2020, Derkach waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election,” the Department explained in its official statement.
According to Apostrophe’s sources, Derkach considers the upcoming release – provoked by American sanctions – the most influential one for the US presidential campaign.
While the US Department of the Treasury introduced sanctions in order to counteract the malign activity of Russian proxies, it might have achieved quite the opposite. By officially acknowledging individuals like Mr. Derkach, it has granted them the legitimacy required to attract greater attention and larger audiences.
Since the start of the previous year, Russian special services have sought to find an appropriate figure for publishing the documents aimed at undermining a series of US officials, thus sowing discord and destabilization in America. In this game, Andrii Derkach continues to be a pawn in the hands of greater political players – a useful pawn, yet a pawn nevertheless.
The United States would have far better results investigating the sources behind Derkach and Dubinsky’s propaganda machine rather than the executors alone. In the meantime, Ukraine is likely to get caught in the crossfire – again.
