Minus Danilov. Power reset continues

President Vladimir Zelensky dismissed Alexey Danilov from the post of Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.

The power reboot, especially the security bloc, announced by President Vladimir Zelensky, continues. Zelensky fired Alexey Danilov from the post of Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, his position was taken by Alexander Litvinenko, who previously headed the Foreign Intelligence Service.

4 years in position

After his dismissal, Danilov summarized the symbolic results of more than 4 years of work at the National Security and Defense Council.

“4 years 5 months 24 days of work as the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. A job reserved until the end.

Days you are not ashamed of. Hours passed at lightning speed. Thank you destiny for giving me the opportunity to serve my country and my people in times of peace and times of war! Thank you to the President of Ukraine for your trust and for the opportunity to participate in the writing of the Great History at the moment of the greatest challenge and the greatest rise!” Danilov said.

Danilov also expressed gratitude to his team and called for faith in the Ukrainian people, their victory in the war against the Russian aggressor. The former NSDC secretary did not mention his future career plans. Deputy Alexey Goncharenko wrote that Danilov was going to work as the Ukrainian ambassador to Norway.

Danilov is the thirteenth Secretary of the Security Council and has held this position since October 3, 2019.

“Today we continue to reboot the management system of our state. There are personnel changes. I thank Alexey Danilov for his work as the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. He was moved in a different direction – more later,” Vladimir Zelensky commented on Danilov’s resignation.

What does Danilov remember?

With the help of the National Security and Defense Council, thousands of sanctions were introduced in 2021 against criminal authorities, smugglers, pro-Russian politicians and the media they control. Many lawyers spoke about the dubious activities of the National Security and Defense Council from the point of view of the law.

Ahead of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Alexei Danilov publicly reassured Ukrainians, calling such a development “unlikely.”

After the start of the war, he explained that the authorities were indeed preparing for the invasion, but did not know the exact date.

One of Danilov’s last high-profile statements this year concerned the crash of the Il-76 plane in the Belgorod region. He directly said that there were no Ukrainian prisoners on board, although the Russian authorities reported the opposite, and Ukrainian intelligence noted that the clarification of all the circumstances is still ongoing.

Russian propaganda also used a deepfake by Danilov on March 22 on the NTV channel. In the edited video, he allegedly admitted Ukraine’s involvement in the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack. At the same time, Ukrainian authorities and Western countries have repeatedly said that such statements are lies.

New secretary

Alexander Litvinenko headed the Foreign Intelligence Service from July 23, 2021. Before that, from April 4, 2014 to August 13, 2019, he was Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.

Litvinenko is a native of Kyiv, a major general, and a graduate of the Institute of Cryptography, Communications and Informatics of the Academy of the Federal Counterintelligence Service of the Russian Federation with a degree in applied mathematics and the Shevchenko National University with a degree in jurisprudence.

Since 1994, he has held various positions in the SBU, the National Institute for Strategic Studies, and in the structures of the National Security and Defense Council. In 2015, he passed a lustration inspection.

As head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Litvinenko did not speak to the media very often, preferring to publish analytical articles about certain events. For example, in February 2023, in an article for the Interfax-Ukraine agency, Litvinenko expressed confidence that Russia is ready to fight with Ukraine for a very long time.

“The war has entered the phase of the war of attrition. There is more and more evidence that the Kremlin is ready to fight as long as necessary,” he said.

But at the same time, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine said, “the key to the success of the Russian Federation is internal destabilization in Ukraine.”

It is significant that Litvinenko actually predicted the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2009. Together with the first Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Vladimir Gorbulin, he published an article entitled “The Big Neighbor Has Decided. What should Ukraine do next?” in Zerkalo Nedeli newspaper. In it they analyzed the situation in Russia and the threats to Ukraine.

“The ideological basis of the Russian state is the mythology of the” Great Victory “, the sense of direct succession of the modern Russian Federation from the Stalinist USSR, the veiled imperial concept of three Russian people (great, small and Belarusians ), a xenophobic complex of hatred towards the West, introduced in the USA, as well as the perception of Russia as a besieged fortress,” the article says.

“The key to foreign policy work should be to consider the taming of Kyiv,” wrote Gorbulin and Litvinenko. “The subordination of Ukraine, or at least its southeastern part, to the Kremlin should significantly improve the situation in the Russian Federation.”

“We are talking about the direct integration of Southern and Eastern Ukraine into the Russian Federation, the creation of a puppet government on the territory of Central Ukraine and the separation from Western Ukraine as the main “troublemaker,” the article said.