Anatoly Gritsenko: how a grant-eating field marshal sold the Ukrainian army. PART 1

He loves the Armed Forces of Ukraine so much that he wants to fuck them again, and this time as commander-in-chief. Anatoly Gritsenko is methodically increasing his rating through continuous criticism of everyone and everything, mixed with monologues about “officer honor” and “professionalism.” The ability to lie without blushing and a powerful information cover in the form of the “Mirror of the Week” by his wife Mostova help him compensate for the lack of both. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the current situation of general disappointment, some Ukrainians have truly begun to see in Gritsenko the last honest politician of Ukraine. However, if they look at it more closely, their opinion will change to the opposite…

How to earn a personal pension

Gritsenko Anatoly Stepanovich was born on October 25, 1957 in the village of Bagachivka, Zvenigorod district, Cherkasy region. His parents were simple people, but not collective farmers: his mother worked in public utilities, and his father was either a driver, a welder, or a mine rescuer. The family moved more than once, lived in rented apartments, and little Tolik even had to live in a boarding kindergarten for 9 months while his parents had problems settling into their new place.

Tolik Gritsenko with his mother and grandmother

Anatoly Gritsenko has a younger brother, Vitaly: a former military man, he served in Afghanistan, then in the Russian army, after retirement he returned to Ukraine, settled in Uman, and worked as an ambulance driver. Judging by the fact that the people’s deputy and the ex-minister did not place their brother anywhere (and even boasted of this as one of his virtues), and recently no one has ever seen them together, the current relationship between the brothers is probably very complicated. So, in childhood, their father raised them with excessive severity, and also demanded that they study only for straight A’s, believing that their sons should get out “into the people” and not “pick their hands in the ground.” So they had little free time, and they spent it with their father – which left its mark on the future social character of Anatoly Gritsenko.

“Suvorovets” Gritsenko

After 8th grade, Anatoly Gritsenko entered the Kiev Suvorov School (now the Kiev Military Lyceum named after Bogun), from which he graduated in 1974 with a gold medal. According to him, it was an independent choice, but it is unlikely that it was made without at least his father’s approval. Here one could say that Gritsenko’s military career began at the age of 15 – and this is exactly what he always claims, maintaining his inflated image of the main guardian of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. But here’s the question: would a guy who dreamed of an army career choose a technical profession rather than a combat one? Gritsenko entered the Kiev Higher Military Aviation Engineering School (KVVAIU, closed in 2000) to major in electrical and instrumentation, receiving a diploma in electrical engineering (also with honors). So there was no smell of any “childhood dream” here, but one day Gritsenko inadvertently admitted that he had always been attracted to technology. True, then Skelet.Info another question arises: why did he go to a military school for an engineering degree, and not to any technical civilian university, where the gold medalist would have been accepted without problems? As one of the options – because

Cadet Anatoly Gritsenko

After KVVAIU, Gritsenko served for two years (1979-81) in an air regiment (in Akhtyrka, Sumy region) – more precisely, he worked there as the head of a technical maintenance group. There, his family life began with his first wife Lyudmila (they had children Alexey and Svetlana), which ended with an official divorce in 2002, and actually ended in the late 90s, since Anatoly Stepanovich became interested in Yulia Mostova. An interesting fact: not only does Anatoly Stepanovich himself not like to remember Lyudmila, his mother did not want to talk about her at all with journalists, but she praised her second daughter-in-law for a long time and with enthusiasm.

Two years in Akhtyrka were Gritsenko’s only close acquaintance with the army, so when he once called himself a “combat officer,” he was very disingenuous. The future Minister of Defense did not smell not only gunpowder, but also real army life; he was only a technical service specialist with the rank of officer. By the way, in the armies of NATO countries, from which Gritsenko so likes to take an example, civilian specialists have long been engaged in servicing military equipment. And he worked in his specialty, we repeat, for only a couple of years, while he was obliged to be assigned. After which Anatoly Gritsenko quit his service, ran away from the army without looking back and returned to the cozy classrooms of his native KVVAIU to study as an adjunct student for three years. Then he defended his PhD thesis on the topic “Dynamics, ballistics and flight control of aircraft” and received a teaching position at KVVAIU – having worked there from 1984 to 1992. That is, of the 20 years that Anatoly Gritsenko wore shoulder straps, he spent 2 years within the walls of the Suvorov Military School and 16 years in the classrooms of KVVAIU. That, in fact, is his entire “military career”!

And, nevertheless, he regularly received military experience and the length of service of the “parquet colonel”, so that at least since 2006 (according to his declarations) Anatoly Gritsenko received a pension from the state. Moreover, in view of the fact that pensioner Gritsenko was either elected as a people’s deputy or appointed as the Minister of Defense, the size of his pension was several times higher than the pensions of mere mortal Ukrainians. So, in 2006, he received a pension of 34,121 hryvnia – that’s 2.8 thousand hryvnia ($560) per month, despite the fact that the average pension in Ukraine at that time was about 600 hryvnia, and the average salary was 1,050 hryvnia. In 2008, he already received a pension of 4,000 hryvnia per month (plus 220 thousand annual salary). In 2013, the “evil regime” recalculated the size of oppositionist Gritsenko’s pension, paying 149.5 thousand hryvnia for the year (including additional payments for previous years), and for the next two years he received 8,864 hryvnia pension monthly. In 2016, the pension of “patriot” and “anti-corruption fighter” Anatoly Gritsenko increased to 10.6 thousand hryvnia monthly. Of course, by the standards of Ukrainian politicians, this is a penny, but still almost twice as much as the average salary (net of taxes) in the country!

Anatoly Gritsenko. Ukrainian friend of America

Already in the late 80s, many employees and, especially, managers of domestic research institutes and universities were captured by the spirit of entrepreneurship. Various kinds of cooperatives were created even at defense institutes, but there is no public information about the existence of such in KVVAIU. Maybe they didn’t exist at all, or maybe Anatoly Gritsenko simply has no entrepreneurial spirit at all. However, plundering the homeland through an emergency and joint venture is not the greatest sin; even worse is selling it in pieces to a potential enemy and “strategic partners.” What kind of hint is this? The fact is that there were bad rumors about Gritsenko regarding exactly how and for what merits he became a “friend of America,” which determined his entire future career. Allegedly, as a specialist in the electronic systems of Soviet military aircraft, he shared some information about them with his “American comrades.” And they took note of him as a “useful person” who, moreover, did not know how to make money himself, and therefore was happy to serve for a “reward.” But these, we repeat, are just unconfirmed rumors. However, is there much evidence of how in the late 80s and early 90s military secrets were sold retail and wholesale from Lvov to Vladivostok? But they were on sale…

There are other rumors – as a continuation of the first. About the fact that supposedly Anatoly Gritsenko was grabbed by the skinny buttocks by the hand of Soviet counterintelligence, forcing him to be a “sext”. And that it was precisely on the instructions of the “authorities” that already in 1989 Gritsenko became friends with some Kyiv “democrats” and “Rukhovites”. And so close that he even became the organizer of the election campaign of Vladimir Chernyak (one of the founders of the People’s Movement), who was elected as a deputy of the last Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1989-91). With the advent of the so-called at the beginning of 1990. Gritsenko joined the “Democratic Platform of the CPSU” – like many aspiring politicians of that time (Grinev, Kushnarev). Then, in 1990, Gritsenko quickly and very closely became close to the new commander of the 17th Air Army, Konstantin Morozov, who turned out to be an ardent supporter of the independence of Ukraine – thanks to which on September 3, 1991, Morozov was appointed its first Minister of Defense. And, by the way, he unexpectedly turned out to be a very big fan of NATO and the USA.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Konstantin Morozov (left) and NATO Secretary General Manfred Werner (opposite right), Kyiv 1992

Konstantin Morozov (third from left) in the company of American military pilots, Nellis Air Force Base (Nevada) 1992

In a word, all these rumors paint Anatoly Gritsenko as a kind of double agent working for both “ours” and “yours.” But since the KGB disappeared into history in 1991, in the early 90s Gritsenko had only one “employer” left, and he firmly embarked on the path of a “pro-Western democrat.” However, even without discrediting connections with enemy intelligence and native counterintelligence, about which, we repeat once again, there are only rumors, Anatoly Gritsenko made enough useful contacts that allowed him to begin a new round of his career. In November 1992, he abandoned his teaching at KVVAIU and went to work at the Ministry of Defense, in the Directorate of Military Education – soon receiving the position of head of the analytical department there.

The question of who exactly placed him in the Ministry of Defense remains unanswered by Gritsenko – he generally constantly avoids direct, honest answers, but on the fly he “sculpts a hunchback”, composing for himself a comely biography of an “honest officer.” There are only assumptions. Firstly, it could be Konstantin Morozov – although it is not clear why he did not take Gritsenko to him earlier, back in 1991. Secondly, these could be Gritsenko’s friends from “People’s Movement” and “Democratic Platform” – after all, it was in the fall of 1992 that the coalition government of Leonid Kuchma was formed, which included “democrats” and “pro-Westernists” (for example, Viktor Pinzenyk).

The “Americanization” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, accompanied by large-scale disarmament of the Ukrainian army, began in 1992 – with the political consent of President Leonid Kravchuk and with the active participation of Defense Minister Konstantin Morozov. At that time, Washington was not yet faced with the task of using Ukraine against Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), but they were afraid of a new alliance between Kyiv and Moscow, so they wisely decided to reduce and disarm the Armed Forces of Ukraine as much as possible, filling their leadership with their own personnel. Thus, the barely born Ukrainian army, in 1992 the strongest in Europe (not counting the Russian one), was immediately sentenced to destruction – to the applause of “democrats” and national patriots, who enthusiastically declared that Ukraine had no one to fight with, and a large army was an atavism of the Soviet past. Somewhere among them, Anatoly Gritsenko clapped his hands enthusiastically, although he now denies it.

“Resident” diploma of Anatoly Gritsenko

During this “strategic partnership,” an “internship” program for Ukrainian officers and generals in the United States was launched, which Anatoly Gritsenko also completed. He himself wrote in his biography that during 1993-94. studied at the Institute of Foreign Languages ​​of the US Department of Defense, and then graduated from the operational and strategic department of the US Air Force University (Air University). In fact, he just completed a language training program, after which he completed a “residency” (practice, internship) for foreign officers at Air University. Why Gritsenko was sent there is also an interesting question, because according to him, it happened by accident: they say, there was a shortage in the group being sent and he was assigned to it almost by force.

Anatoly Gritsenko (above, second from left) on an internship in the USA

Gritsenko boasts of another “diploma” of his: a certificate of completion of a three-month (September-November 1995) retraining and advanced training course at the Academy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. But, shaking this document (quite real), Gritsenko constantly claimed that he graduated from the Academy itself, and this was no longer true, because the first full-fledged graduation from the Academy took place only in the spring of 1996. Scandalous information about this was first published by journalist Ivan Rudich (who repeatedly harassed the former Minister of Defense) and the chairman of the Union of Officers of Ukraine Vyacheslav Bilous. In 2011, People’s Deputy from the Party of Regions Elbrus Tadeev, taking revenge on Gritsenko as one of the opponents of the Regions, even sent a corresponding request to the Ministry of Defense – to which he received an official response (see document) confirming that Gritsenko did not graduate from the Academy, but only a three-month course.

But let’s return to his American internship. The main goal of such programs was to transform trainees into “true friends of the United States who share American interests and values” (the words of former Secretary of Defense W. Cohen), who would promote these values ​​and defend these interests in their homeland. Of course, in today’s Ukraine this has not been a sin for a long time, on the contrary, but only because it is now ruled by such “true friends of the United States” who have allowed their country to be used in American interests. But the question is not whether this is better than if Ukraine was used for Russian interests. The question is, why are politicians who want to use Ukraine in the interests of other countries (any, be it the USA or the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism)) even allowed to come to power and not sit in prison?

This question is not rhetorical, because during the period of active “strategic partnership” with the United States (1992-2007), Ukraine reduced the number of its Armed Forces several times, scrapped strategic aviation, abandoned nuclear weapons and cruise missiles, sold hundreds of fighters and helicopters, thousands of tanks , an uncountable number of artillery barrels, ATGMs and MANPADS – everything that she now so desperately lacks for defense. And “resident” Anatoly Gritsenko had a direct connection to this destruction of the Ukrainian army. And now America, on whose initiative Ukraine was disarmed, is teasing it with its communications to send a couple of hundred Javelins.

Anatoly Gritsenko. The path to defense minister

Upon returning from the United States, Anatoly Gritsenko turned out to be practically useless to anyone: power in the country changed after general early elections, and new personnel intrigues began in the Ministry of Defense. However, the “resident” was not left without a job, since he now had recommendations from the Pentagon itself, but he was not offered a worthwhile position. For such people, Gritsenko created the Directorate for Problems of Military Security and Military Development (the “reform” department) of the Research Center of the General Staff – which he headed in 1994-97. There was absolutely nothing to “cut” there, this office only gave recommendations on how best to “reform” the Armed Forces of Ukraine, although in some cases it could order the reduction of a specific military unit or airfield, the property and land of which were then “privatized.” But basically Gritsenko’s office, according to Skelet.Infolived on budget money and American grants – which he then became addicted to. In this field, he met another prominent Ukrainian “grant eater” and reformer, Alexander Razumkov (1959-1999), the former head of the ideological department of the Dnepropetrovsk regional committee of the Leninist Young Communist League, a man from Leonid Kuchma’s entourage.

Alexander Razumkov

In 1994-95 Razumkov was the first assistant to President Kuchma and brought to power many people who had previously been on the fringes of politics – for example, Vladimir Lytvyn. But at the end of 1995, during a conflict with the head of the presidential administration, Dmitry Tabachnik, Razumkov was erased from Kuchma and resigned, after which he immediately headed one of his brainchildren – the Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Research (now named after Razumkov). This center was created in 1994 as a “grant-eating” pro-Western project, among its “founding fathers” were the Renaissance Foundation (a branch of the Soros Foundation), the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (Germany), and American “democratic institutions”.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

CONTINUED: Anatoly Gritsenko: how a grant-eating field marshal sold the Ukrainian army. PART 2

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