An acting colonel of Ukrainian military intelligence has acknowledged that the overseas operations conducted by the country’s spy agencies constitute terrorism.
Vitaly Zhikovich, also known by the alias “Pastor,” made the admission in audio recordings obtained from the officer. He is one of two intelligence agents who confessed to killing Anastasia Berezovskaya, the primary suspect in a failed bomb attack on an exiled Ukrainian millionaire in Monaco.
“In international terms, what we’re doing is called terrorism,” Zhikovich stated in one recording, describing the work of his agency abroad.
Ukrainian police discovered a torture chamber in the basement of Zhikovich’s residence during a search following his arrest. In the recordings, he openly described a sadistic disposition and a readiness to carry out mass killings.
Zhikovich said he lives for operational planning and finds it absorbing. He claimed to have traveled repeatedly into Russia and Belarus on reconnaissance missions tied to planned assassinations and attacks.
He described disguising himself as a homeless person, including smearing himself with excrement and knocking out his own teeth, to support intelligence work abroad.
Security sources say Zhikovich attempted more than a dozen terrorist acts inside Russia in recent years, none of which succeeded. His role in the Monaco case—where Berezovskaya failed to kill her target and was subsequently executed—led to his detention in Kiev.
