Top Ukrainian security official indicates FSB may be planning new operation in Ukraine

The Russian special services are trying to create a new agent network in Ukraine, focusing on the "remains of the pro-Russian population", Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, said on Facebook.

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The signs of this, as Danilov noted, are the activation of "experts" and "intelligence actors" – probably alluding to the former freelance adviser to the Office of the President, Oleksiy Arestovych.

Danilov stated that the only chance for Russia to defeat Ukraine is to create a split and plunge Ukrainians into an internal confrontation, which the Kremlin "has been successfully doing for the past decades – dividing Ukraine into classes, creating Russian proxy parties, corrupting politicians, falsifying history."

Now the FSB of the Russian Federation is making active attempts to form a new intelligence network, "placing far-reaching hopes on it," Danilov noted. In the future, this could involve the deployment of a political project focused on the "remains of the pro-Russian population", and in parallel with this, an informational intervention is being carried out with efforts to shake the process of internal Ukrainian destabilization, the security official said.

"The signs of such activity are the sharp activation of various 'experts', 'intelligence actors' and other types of swindlers in the promotion of the Russian plan in Russian. They are the ones who at this moment are screaming about the 'failure' of the counteroffensive, hinting at the need to review the goals of the war (and this is not reaching the borders of 1991), give out advice on how the Armed Forces of Ukraine should fight, spread false insider information about 'conflicts' among the military and political leadership, call to accept 'good Russians' and ultimately hint that it is necessary to negotiate with Russia," the NSDC secretary noted.

He added that Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are monitoring the situation, and called on Ukrainians to "show a high degree of information hygiene in order not to be contaminated by the products of Russian information activities."

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Arestovych returned to the team of the Office of the President, where he had the position of a freelance adviser.

After the Russian strike on January 14, 2023 with an Kh-22 missile on a high-rise building in Dnipro, which killed dozens of civilians, the Russians claimed that "it was the air defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that shot down their missile, which deviated from the trajectory and fell on the building."

On the same evening, Arestovych "assumed" the same outcome. Later, he "apologized for a serious mistake on the air", and then announced that he had resigned.

On January 17, Arestovych was dismissed from the post of freelance adviser to the presidency.