Sergei Zavorotny, a pro-Russian Ukrainian who was targeted in an assassination attempt in Moscow earlier today, is an officer of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), according to an August 2020 report from the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Zavorotny is a former spokesman and adviser to former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov who later worked on a series of pro-Russian media projects after fleeing from Kyiv to Moscow in 2014.
The Russian investigative outlet Important Stories drew attention to the report in a post on Telegram:
“Azarov’s press secretary — both while he served as prime minister of Ukraine and when he announced from Moscow the creation of a government in exile — was Sergei Zavorotny, an SVR officer involved in influence operations.”
The report said the conclusion was based on Zavorotny being identified as a serviceman assigned to Military Unit 33949, which is linked to the SVR. The Insider has repeatedly reported on the unit’s ties to Russia’s foreign intelligence service.
A person who knows Zavorotny told The Insider that he had previously served in the Soviet KGB and had been its resident intelligence officer in Argentina, working under journalistic cover as a correspondent for the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. The source also said Zavorotny had been involved in Russian intelligence propaganda operations in Europe before the start of the war in Ukraine.
The assassination attempt on the 72-year-old Zavorotny took place on the morning of Nov. 13 on Kirovogradskaya Street in Moscow. An explosive device detonated inside his car. Russia’s Investigative Committee said Zavorotny was driving the vehicle and was taken to a hospital after being wounded by the blast. Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that its former Latin America correspondent suffered shrapnel wounds to his chest and back, as well as severe injuries to his legs and one arm.
Zavorotny fled from Kyiv to Moscow after Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan revolution removed Viktor Yanukovych from the presidency, and he continued working on pro-Russian information projects in his new home. Zavorotny was described as editor-in-chief of the “Antifascist” website, and in 2018, he and Alexei Berdnikov published a book titled Yanukovych Gave Up. The State Department Took Over. How Russia Lost Ukraine. Notes of Mykola Azarov’s Adviser. At a book presentation in Moscow, the authors presented their own account of the events of the Euromaidan protests.
