In early February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revoked the citizenship of a number of Ukrainian politicians. Among them is the deputy of the Odessa City Council Viktor Baransky, writes Anticorrosive.
However, this decision, despite its external positivity, is puzzling. Because instead of simply prosecuting Baransky – and he can be charged with a number of articles of the Criminal Code: from ordinary fraud and smuggling to high treason – the odious Odessa deputy, who is wanted by the United States for involvement in the export of Venezuelan oil, is simply taken away passport.
Which looks a little weird. Because, if you delve into the biography of Baransky, then the deprivation of Ukrainian citizenship does not look like a punishment, but rather like a reward. Because now the state of Ukraine is not at all obliged to extradite him at the request of the United States – this is not our citizen, we have nothing to do with him.
This story reminds someone, doesn’t it? But if with the oligarch who made the player a member of the president’s piano, such a conclusion from the blow is understandable and explainable, then who slipped Zelensky on the lists for deprivation of citizenship of Baransky, who hates this very Zelensky with fierce hatred and even publicly offered to start “de-greening” the country ?
Deprivation of citizenship also raises other questions. The United States is looking for Baransky for his involvement in the export of sanctioned Venezuelan oil. Since at least 2019, Fides Ship Management’s tankers have been exporting oil from Venezuela, bypassing a direct ban. In addition, Russian oil was transported on the same tankers, and this happened after February 24, 2022, when the owner of Fides Ship Management, Viktor Baransky, dramatically changed his color and began to broadcast something about the resistance of Russia, which he had previously called to Ukraine.
According to the Opendatabot database, the ultimate owner of the Fides Ship Management company with an authorized capital of a thousand hryvnias is Valentina Solonenko, who replaced the same “pound” Yuriy Tkach in this incarnation.
But in fact, according to a report by the Brussels-based NGO Shipbreaking Platform, Baranskiy’s offshore Vista Shipping is the real owner of Fides Ship Management. This is also confirmed by the Panama Papers archive of offshore companies – Baransky is the full owner of Vista Shipping.
According to the US Treasury, this company owns the tankers Balia (IMO: 9192258), Balita (IMO: 9176773), Domani (IMO: 9041057) and Freedom (IMO: 9018464). It should be noted that the ship Sierra (IMO: 9147447), which is now owned by the Russian company Rustanker LLC, also fell under separate sanctions. But from 2016 to 2019, according to the Equasis database, this tanker was also controlled by the Odessa firm Fides Ship Management.
It was these vessels that exported oil from Venezuela after the United States imposed sanctions on the country’s oil sector in January 2019. In addition, sailors were sent to Fides Ship Management’s vessels from the Eurobalk crewing agency, which is also owned by Viktor Baransky. In addition, these same vessels entered the ports of the occupied Crimea without prejudice.
And this was the reason for the search for the owner of the ships, who, bypassing the sanctions, helped the Nicolás Maduro regime to obtain currency. And at the moment when the US Treasury found out the true name of the owner of these ships and his citizenship, the President of Ukraine signs a decree depriving Viktor Baransky of his Ukrainian passport.
No less strange is the situation in connection with the internal activities of Viktor Baransky. As recently as at the beginning of February 2022, Viktor Baransky, a member of the Odessa City Council from the Opposition Platform for Life, proposed cutting funding for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
However, then it fell into the stream of the general policy of Ukraine – “if we finance the army, then we will not have enough money for roads.” However, after February 24, all these statements sparkled with new colors.
In the case of Baransky, these statements were aggravated by the clearly pro-Russian position of the deputy. Together with other deputies Roman Senik, Vitaly Sautenkov, Alexei Yeremitsa and Vladimir Kornienko, Baransky himself represents the interests of the Boyko-Levochkin group in the Opposition Platform for Life in the Odessa City Council.
Until 2020, Baransky was a member of the Odessa Regional Council, where he also demonstrated a pro-Russian political position. For example, in August 2019, Baransky, together with fellow party members, tried to rip off the flag of Ukraine in the hall of the Odessa Regional Council.
In addition, he was accused of financing the “Shariy party”, to which Baransky flew to Barcelona in October 2021 and with whom he flew to Moscow on flight FRX733.
In addition, back in 2014, Baransky openly supported the so-called “Bessarabian People’s Republic”, for which he received money from the FSB into his own accounts. After the failure of the “Russian spring” in Odessa, he somewhat slowed down his rhetoric, but he had to work off the money taken – Baransky took part in financing the so-called “DNR” and “LNR”, where he regularly transferred money from his offshore companies.
Baransky wrote about his pro-Russian position on social networks, but after February 24 last year, he cleared out everything for which, in the heat of his Russian masters’ attack on Odessa, they could simply be shot:
And so that no one would ask about his recent past, he organized the distribution of food to the poor citizens of Odessa on behalf of the charitable foundation “For Odessa”.
According to all these facts, the vaunted SBU, under the control of the “devil hunter” senior lieutenant of the reserve Bakanov, did not bother to conduct at least an elementary check. She did not bother to do this even after the disappearance of Bakanov (by the way – where is he?).
Over the past year, no one has bothered to interrogate Viktor Baransky about his involvement in the financing and creation of the so-called “Odessa People’s Republic”, which was supposed to arise on February 25, 2022 after the Russian Black Sea Fleet would have landed troops in the port of Odessa. It was the ONR figures who were supposed to coordinate the landing. They also handed over the lists of pro-Ukrainian activists to the FSB and were supposed to take part in the “filtration measures” of the FSB and the National Guard in the “Odessa People’s Republic” before the “referendum”, in which 99% of the inhabitants of the “ONR” would vote for “joining the Russian Federation” .
Against the background of all this, Baransky’s accusations of embezzlement of budgetary funds during the reconstruction of berth No. 7 in the Odessa Commercial Sea Port look like a real trifle. According to the investigation, about one billion hryvnias were laundered through the firms of Viktor Baransky, but criminal proceedings No. 22014160000000139 are still in the “investigation stage”.
Also in 2016, there was a series of publications from which it followed that Baransky was a counterfeiter and carried counterfeit currency from Poland. At the same time, it became known that the Viktor Baransky Foundation was created just under the laundering of criminal illegal money.
Against all this background, the decision of Volodymyr Zelensky to deprive Viktor Baransky of Ukrainian citizenship looks not just strange, but raises a huge number of questions. Including – and where is Viktor Baransky now, whose frankly treacherous activities the Ukrainian authorities have not noticed point-blank all this time? And why, instead of prison, he received only deprivation of citizenship? How does this punish him, given that Viktor Baransky has had a Romanian passport for many years? And – and who slipped the text of the Decree on depriving Viktor Baransky of citizenship on Zelensky’s table? After all, the president himself writes the texts of his decrees, everyone understands this. Why are frank traitors to the Motherland and scum getting off with such frankly ridiculous “punishments”?
Marina Vorona