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Between 2014 and 2017, Ukraines leadership failed to transform the countrys old post-Soviet Russia oligarchic system into a European and Western-style democracy. The transformation isinefficient and slow, and this entails risk, writes Roman Rukomeda.

Roman Rukomeda is a political expert.

There is no doubt that Russia continues to influence Ukraine by all possible means available. Cyber warfare became the main direction of Russias undeclared war against Ukraine in the first half of 2017.

However, the Ukrainian authorities are alleged to be using the undeclared war with Russia as the main reason for the lack of reforms and transformations in the country.

One of the key risks in Ukraine is the perception of people of the absence of effective efforts to fight corruption on all levels. During the July EU-Ukraine summit in Kyiv, President of the European Commission Jean Claude Juncker said Ukraine needs to speed up its fight against corruption.

Otherwise, there will be no serious progress in the dialogue with the EU regarding financial support (the next 600 million tranche from the EU to Ukraine is dependent on real results in the fight against corruption).

For that reason, the Ukrainian president will be keen to show some results in fighting corruption at the middle level. However, without any major agreements with internal players in Ukraine, it is rather unlikely that real measures to fight corruption on the top level will be carried out.

Another important risk for Ukraine is retaining an oligarchic model of power that does not promote the development of strong and transparent democratic institutions, an advanced level of political institutional culture, or build integrity and implement European values.

President Poroshenko is criticised for playing the role of the chief oligarch in Ukraine, using his political position to secure strong influence over the media, various industries, the financial sector, security, law enforcement and the courts.

At the same time, as President, he exercises informal control over the somewhat unstable coalition in Parliament and over the cabinet of ministers. Consequently, all the other main oligarchs in Ukraine now either support the president or oppose him, resulting in several challenges in sorting out the national economy properly.

The third most important risk is the open threat from Russia. It is present not only in the form of military operations in Donbas but also potentially in the spheres of economy, media, information technology and energy, to mention but a few.

It is very clear that Russia is currently by no means ready to recognise the independence of the Ukraine state and its right to decide on what level of relationship it would have and what position it would take on the issue of integration with the EU and the Euro-Atlantic community. Consequently, this complicated situation will continue for quite some time.

I see three scenarios. Lets start withthe optimistic one. Following his declarations, Ukraine will intensify its internal reforms and transformations. Besides the implementation of NATO approaches and standards in the defence and security sector, the Ukrainian authorities will initiate a real and massive fight against corruption.

For that purpose, the judicial reform will be urgently conducted and the first wave of high-level corrupt officials (MPs, ministers and deputy ministers, prosecutors, judges etc.) will go to jail after open court trials, with transparency for public decisions. The rule of law will be strengthened, and the oligarchic model will start to shift towards a democratic model.

This will ruin the existing monopolistic schemes in the national economy and open up markets, making Ukraine attractive for foreign investors. NATO will continue to support Ukraineand will start discussing the possibility of a Membership Action Plan for Kyiv after 2020.

The EU will confirm that Ukraines reforms are satisfactory and launch the new plan of economic support for Ukraine in autumn of 2017. Russia will slowly prepare the withdrawal of its troops from Donbas under pressure from Western sanctions and growing internal problems.

The pessimistic scenario.

Ukraine will sink into deep internal controversy. The fight for the decreasing amount of state resources between the oligarchic groups will escalate, resulting in political instability (early parliamentarian or even presidential elections).

Massive internal protests (partly inspired by different oligarchic groups) could lead to serious unrest, conflicts with the police or National Guard and civilian casualties. Ukraine could once again move towards a new internal revolution on the basis of total war between different oligarchic groups that will try to seek support from outside players (EU, USA and Russia).

Consequently, the state system will become less effective and economic, social and technological development will fail, as will integration into the EU and NATO. Ukraine will effectively follow the pattern of third world countries, creating a large number of security risks in the region for all of its neighbours.

Russia will exploit this situation and try to launch a new military offensive in Donbas or establish control over the Ukrainian authorities through political, economic, media and other ways of manipulation. The state will be seized from the Ukrainian people by oligarchs.

The realistic scenario.

This scenario is the most probable and will combine elements of the two scenarios mentioned above. It is more likely that the current Ukrainian government will continue to reform the country, but at a slow pace, preparing the grounds for controlling key media actors as well as continuing to exercise control over major economic and financial resources in the country.

The main political partner will continue to be the National Front party. Oligarchs will redirect business to the west. The Government will try to fight corruption at a low and medium level, but impunity for corruption will continue at a high level.

The EU and NATO will nevertheless continue to support Ukraine but without deep integration in the absence of structural internal changes. Ukraine will slowly move along the path of a developing democracy, but the road will be long and painful. A joint solution on Donbas may eventually be reached in the conflict with Russia, while the issue of Crimea will be put on hold indefinitely.

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Three risks and three scenarios for Ukraine - EURACTIV

Yesterday I went into detail about the founding father of modern Ukraine, Stepan Bandera, who is seen as a hero in western Ukraine but deemed a Nazi collaborator in the eastern part of the country.

For decades, Ukraine has been deeply divided both historically and culturally between its east and west. That deep division actually dates back long before both Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

Today western Ukraine generally refers to the area that was formerly known as Galicia in history textbooks. Inhabited predominantly by ethnic Ukrainians, Galicia, along with the nearby Lodomeria, formed an autonomous kingdom under the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the 19th century right until the end of the First World War.

The kingdom adopted Ukrainian, Polish and German as its official languages simultaneously, and was among the most populous and prosperous areas within the Habsburg empire in those days.

However, the end of the First World War and the subsequent disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire spelt a sudden end to the golden era of Galicia.

Under the Treaty of Riga concluded in 1921 among the European powers, Galicia was officially incorporated into the newly independent Poland, despite the fact that the majority of Galicians at that time actually preferred to build an independent state of their own.

During the inter-war years, a series of military clashes broke out between Poland and the independent Ukraine over the sovereignty of Galicia, with the latter seeking to build a greater Ukraine and unify with the former autonomous kingdom.

However, in face of growing Soviet aggression in the east, both Kiev and Warsaw quickly set aside their differences and formed an alliance against Moscow. And under their bilateral deal, Warsaw agreed to grant Galicia a high degree of autonomy as long as it remained in Poland.

Unfortunately, Galicias fate once again took a nasty twist in August 1939 when the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact.

Under the secret pact, Berlin and Moscow agreed that they would divide up Poland, after which Galicia would become part of Ukraine, which itself had already become a member republic of the Soviet Union by the time the treaty was signed.

During the Second World War, Galicia, which had then already become the western part of Ukraine, was subject to totalitarian and brutal rule by Moscow, during which an estimated 200,000 ethnic Ukrainians were forced into exile in Siberia, and the vast majority of them were eventually massacred by the Soviet secret police.

At the Yalta Conference held in February 1945, the sovereignty of Galicia became a major sticking point among Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. However, eventually both the US and Britain decided that it would be in their best interests to acknowledge Moscows sovereignty over Galicia because they still very much needed the partnership of the Soviet Union to defeat both Germany and Japan.

As we can see, Galicia, or the modern western Ukraine, used to be an independent political entity in its own right and had a unique sense of national identity of its own. And that sense of national identity has survived the entire Soviet era and remains strong even to this day.

Given their unique historical background, western Ukrainians today still identify themselves strongly with western Europeans culturally and religiously, with the majority of them being Catholics. They strongly resist being assimilated into Russia like the eastern Ukrainians have been, and hence the current divisions and tensions between western and eastern Ukraine.

After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, there were calls among western Ukrainian nationalists for seceding from the rest of Ukraine and re-establishing an independent Galicia.

Galicia independence is not necessarily a wild dream. It is because as long as the western Ukrainians are able to gain the support of the European Union, they could press ahead with their independence plan like the people in Kosovo did back in 2008, although it would inevitably further undermine the political stability of Ukraine.

Ironically, however, unlike in the past, this time Moscow is likely to throw its weight behind the separatist movement in western Ukraine.

It is because a weakened, volatile and politically divided Ukraine is exactly what Russian President Vladimir Putin wants, so that it can continue to serve as a buffer state between Russia and NATO countries.

This article appeared in the Hong Kong Economic Journal on Aug 17

Translation by Alan Lee

[Chinese version ]

Contact us at [emailprotected]

RC

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Can western Ukraine re-establish an independent Galicia? - EJ Insight

Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko visiting the Yuzhmash factory in Dnipro in October 2014. The factory has been linked with the supply of powerful missile engines to North Korea. Photograph: Mykhailo Markiv/Ukrainian Presidential Press Service

Ukraines president, Petro Poroshenko, has ordered an urgent investigation into a contested report that a factory in his country may have supplied powerful missile engines to North Korea in breach of international sanctions.

In a report published this week, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said North Korea had made rapid strides in its long-range rocket programme thanks to motors acquired covertly in Ukraine or Russia.

Recent test launches have fuelled fears that nuclear-tipped North Korean rockets could strike US territory, signifying progress that the IISS attributed to Pyongyangs use of modified Soviet-era missile engines built at Ukraines Yuzhmash facility or the Energomash plant in Russia.

The author of the report, IISS missile expert Michael Elleman, told the New York Times that the motors probably came from Yuzhmash. The plant is based in the eastern city of Dnipro, about 250km from territory controlled since 2014 by Russian-backed separatists.

The claims have been denied by top officials in Ukraine, which relies heavily on US support in countering Russian efforts to stop it integrating with the West.

No matter how absurd the allegations made against Ukraine, as responsible partners we should carefully check the information, Mr Poroshenko said.

That is why I have urgently ordered a detailed and multifaceted investigation of the situation.

He said it would be led by the secretary of Ukraines security and defence council, Oleksandr Turchynov, and would involve officials from the defence industry and the Yuzhmash factory, and should deliver results later this week.

Im sure it will allow us to confirm the erroneousness of speculation about a Ukrainian fingerprint in the North Korean ballistic [missile story, and probably identify the real source and purpose of this groundless fake, Mr Poroshenko added.

Earlier this week, Mr Turchynov said Ukraine regards the North Korean regime as totalitarian, dangerous and unpredictable, and supports all sanctions against this country.

Ukraine has never supplied rocket engines and any missile technology to North Korea. We believe that this anti-Ukrainian campaign was triggered by Russian secret services to cover their participation in the North Korean nuclear and missile programmes, he added.

The allegations were also denied by Yuzhmash, which has been the focus of North Korean attention before: in 2012, two North Korean agents were jailed in Ukraine for trying to acquire secret missile information from factory employees.

Other western missile experts have questioned the findings of the IISS report, and unnamed US intelligence officials told both Reuters and CNN that North Koreas latest rocket engines were probably built inside the isolated country.

Officials in Moscow quickly drew attention to the allegations against Ukraine, but US state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the country has a very strong non-proliferation record, and that includes specifically withrespect to North Korea.

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Ukraine to investigate claims of North Korea missile link - Irish Times

It isnt often when mixed martial arts is called upon to act as a unifying force in a ravished conflict zone. Despite its inherently violent nature, MMA will serve as the foundation for an unprecedented sports event in the Donbas, the Eastern region of Ukraine currently occupied by pro-Russian separatist forces.

Just hours before Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor square off in Las Vegas on August 26, UFC veteran Nikita Krylov will headline a one-off United Donbas event against Maro Perak in the occupied territory of Donetsk. The news was announced in a press release sent out by the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Tourism in the de facto Donetsk Peoples Republic.

The press release revealed that a total of 18 competitors from the occupied territories, Croatia, and China, will compete in nine fights before inviting fans of martial arts in the Republic and those temporarily under the control of the Ukrainian authorities in the Donetsk region to attend and see grandiose sports event of this summer with their own eyes." In addition to the MMA event, a concert will be held featuring notable Russian artists. Attendance to both is free of charge.

The unique event is funded by the United Donbas Foundation, a humanitarian aid program started by the two self-proclaimed republics within Ukraine, the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), to unify the people of the Donbas. Over the past couple of years, both republics have shared a growing fascination with mixed martial arts, one that has led to the proliferation of the sport among the republics youth.

Naturally, the pro-Russian leaders have already glimpsed the sports potential as a political tool. UFC veteran Jeff Monson has already paid a visit to LPR in 2016, thus establishing a precedent for other athletes to legitimize the self-imposed government.

In short, MMA has become a core component of the separatist republics political strategy. Its politicization is the result of the ongoing conflict and the inevitable nationalism that sprouts from the chaos and destruction left in its wake.

War Torn & Forgotten

In November 2013, Ukraines fourth president Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign a trade association agreement with the European Union, which triggered severe unrest within the country. Citizens accused the president of widespread state corruption and excessive loyalty to Russia instead of improving relations with Europe. The rapidly growing sentiment was that Yanukovych represented Russian interests and not those of the Ukrainian people. The organized uprising known as Euromaidan lasted until February 2014, when president Yankovych was deposed and fled Kiev.

Yanukovychs departure and eventual exile to Russia triggered anti-revolution backlash from Ukrainians in Russophone regions with loyalty to their neighboring country, as well as lightly veiled military intervention from Russia. Just a few months removed the Euromaidan movement, Russian forces swept in and annexed Crimea and Sevastopol in March 2014.

Cities in eastern and southern Ukraine began to protest the decision to remove Yankovych from office, eventually resorting to armed resistance against the seemingly anti-Russian government. While Western Ukraine remains under government control, the Donbas region in the east has been divided into two de facto pro-Russian separatist statesthe Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) which the Ukrainian government considers temporarily occupied territories. A bitter stand-off has ensued between the separatists and the Ukrainian government, making it Europes most volatile conflict in over 25 years.

Though fragile ceasefire agreements were imposed in 2015, the conflict continues to rage on. Between April 2014 and March 2017, report suggests that millions of Ukrainians have been displaced and nearly ten thousand have been killed. Casualties on both sides have sharply risen over the past two years as millions struggle for survival in a conflict zone.

The early days of Donald Trumps presidency saw renewed escalation in the conflict between separatist forces and the Ukrainian government. The UN report documented 73 civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine in July 2016, which, at the time, was the highest death toll since August 2015; 69 separate civilian casualties had been reported the previous month. Despite the spike in death tolls and civilian casualties, the conflict in Ukraine has been woefully underreported in 2017.

Largely forgotten in the spheres of international politics, the separatist forces have been left to their own devices in their self-proclaimed (yet officially unrecognized) republics. Local leaders have turned to sports as part of a so-called humanitarian program to revitalize their struggling populations and distract the local youth traumatized by war. This has resulted in the proliferation of mixed martial arts in Eastern Ukraine and, hence, its inevitable politicization.

Cagefighting Nationalism

In February 2017, official envoys of the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) unveiled a humanitarian program that sought to reunify the people of the Donbas.

In a joint statement read by representatives Denis Pushilin and Vladislav Deinego at an official meeting in Minsk, Belarus, the DPR and LPR described plans to provide humanitarian aid in the form of financial, medical and educational assistance to vulnerable groups of Donbas population, primarily those in regions controlled by the Ukrainian government.

All funding was provided through the United Donbas Foundation and approved by a special committee. According to acting DPR Health Care Minister Alexander Oprishchenko, quality medical assistance [has been] provided to 105 patients who live in Ukraine-controlled part of Donetsk Region since the start of the program.

After achieving modest medical success through the foundation, both de facto republics turned their attention to sports, a tool they planned to use to kindle nationalistic fervour and project the illusion of legitimacy, safety, and prosperity within the separatist regions. Combat sports, mainly mixed martial arts, took centre stage because of its growing popularity among the locals. By August 2017, MMA had been integrated into the LPR and DPRs plans for unification in the Donbas, starting with a large-scale MMA event planned for the end of August 2017.

The event, dubbed United Donbas, was announced by the president of the Association of Combat Sports in Donbas Roman Torshin, who referred to it as a key event of mixed martial arts not only in the Donbas, but also in the territory of the entire former Ukraine. The show will be headlined by UFC veteran Nikita Krylov, himself a native of Donbas.

Krylov exited the UFC in early 2017 following a dispute in contract negotiations with the promotion. He returned to Russia, where he fought for Fight Nights before agreeing to a one-off fight in the Donbas. While Krylovs incentive to participate on the fight card stems from his yearning to fight in front of his fellow countrymen, he also echoed the same statements about unity in Donbas that were propagated by the separatist governments.

It is a huge event aimed at uniting the Donbas as a whole, Krylov told Mk.ru. And I'm very glad that I will fight at home. It was my dream. A great event for the residents. You need to charge the local people. MMA is the number one sport there. They dont care about football or anything else.

Krylovs response adequately summarizes the reasons why MMA was strategically selected for the United Donbas project. The violent sport can be used to stimulate residents of the war-torn regions and unite them by cheering for hometown heroes like Kyrlov. Unlike more traditional sports like football, where rigid international structures and bureaucracy make it impossible for unrecognized de facto states to compete in legitimate tournaments, MMA does not follow such guidelines and is easier to recreate as a tool for national pride. In this case, the separatist forces have been able to hire a fighter who once competed in the worlds most popular MMA promotion, and have him compete on their local show for political gain.

Monson & the Miner

The politicization of mixed martial arts in occupied Ukraine territory is evident in the current landscape, which underlines the sports potential for political influence and diplomacy, particularly when applied in regions ravished by war.

Krylov left the Donbass region of Ukraine shortly following the start of the conflict in mid-2014. Originally a miner from Krasnyi Luch in the Luhansk province, Nikita fled his home in Donetsk just a few weeks ahead of his scheduled fight against Cody Donovan in Dublin, Ireland. He won that fight by TKO, the very same week that the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down while flying over Ukrainian airspace. Krylov fled to Kiev, where he found himself unwelcome because of his pro-Russian stance on the conflict. He was labelled a separatist and was shunned from gyms and training camps. A near-altercation with a soldier from the far-right Azov battalion helped Krylov make the decision to move his family permanently to Moscow.

Since then, the fighter has openly questioned the ongoing conflict, the ideological schism leading Ukrainians to kill other Ukrainians, and the traumatic effect of war on the innocent locals. Indeed, when asked whether he considers the United Donbas event a political one, Krylovs response encapsulated his perspective on the matter: It is a human one. An ideology of unity. Seemingly unconcerned with the overshadowing political context, Krylovs focus is on the events potential as a form of entertainment for an injured population.

This is necessary for lifting spirits, Krylov explained. Some people have not see any holidays and shows there for a long time. It is dangerous in the city and it's dangerous where they fight. And in Donetsk, there live peaceful people, to whom this war brought many misfortunes. It's time to raise their morale.

While Krylov, a native of the Donbas and victim of the ongoing conflict, was a natural pick to headline the show, he is not the only athlete being used to advance the LPR and DPRs plans for combat sports diplomacy. UFC veteran Jeff Monson, a self-proclaimed anarchist and libertarian communist, recently became the first American citizen to accept a LPR passport, a symbolic gesture that preceded his decision to open martial arts schools in the occupied territory in late 2016. Monsons ambitions were approved by the local leaders, and backed by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF).

Currently in the process of obtaining Russian citizenship, Monson was named the sports ambassador for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) in July 2016. The Communist Party sent Monson to Luhansk in September as part of a new sports programme, which is designed to improve the partys image both on the international stage and at home. Given that American support is rarely available to socialist groups, the KPRF jumped at the opportunity to enlist a willing American communists support.

The KPRF recruited fresh faces to the party by enlisting youngsters in deteriorated regions such as Donetsk and Luhansk into martial arts programs. It is an example of sports diplomacy and how political parties enlist the support of popular athletes to further their overarching goals.

"I want to work with the Communist Party to move it further left," Monson told me in 2016. "A lot of the social projects we are discussing, including opening up free schools to promote youth martial arts, can be done despite capitalist restraints."

Monsons involvement in political sport in eastern Ukraine doesnt end with martial arts academies. Reports recently revealed plans for the LPR to host a martial arts event dubbed the Monson Cup. The UFC veteran is expected to headline the event, which will feature an array of grappling and MMA showcases. The news was first announced by the leader of the Donbas faction of the Night Wolves, the infamous biker gang affiliated to Russian president Vladimir Putin, as well as Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov.

Jeff Monson and Nikita Krylov are the first UFC veterans to be indoctrinated into the separatists sports agenda. Despite contrasting reasons for their participation, the two fighters are a blueprint for how to help legitimize de facto regimes using professional fight sports such as mixed martial arts. Whether it be a tool for diplomacy, kindling nationalism, or even as a distraction from the trauma of war, MMA is a sport that continues to be weaponized by authoritarian regimes anxious to reap its rewards.

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United Donbas: The politics of MMA in war-torn Eastern Ukraine - Bloody Elbow

There is no evidence that Profexer worked, at least knowingly, for Russias intelligence services, but his malware apparently did.

That a hacking operation that Washington is convinced was orchestrated by Moscow would obtain malware from a source in Ukraine perhaps the Kremlins most bitter enemy sheds considerable light on the Russian security services modus operandi in what Western intelligence agencies say is their clandestine cyberwar against the United States and Europe.

It does not suggest a compact team of government employees who write all their own code and carry out attacks during office hours in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but rather a far looser enterprise that draws on talent and hacking tools wherever they can be found.

Also emerging from Ukraine is a sharper picture of what the United States believes is a Russian government hacking group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 28 or Fancy Bear. It is this group, which American intelligence agencies believe is operated by Russian military intelligence, that has been blamed, along with a second Russian outfit known as Cozy Bear, for the D.N.C. intrusion.

Rather than training, arming and deploying hackers to carry out a specific mission like just another military unit, Fancy Bear and its twin Cozy Bear have operated more as centers for organization and financing; much of the hard work like coding is outsourced to private and often crime-tainted vendors.

In more than a decade of tracking suspected Russian-directed cyberattacks against a host of targets in the West and in former Soviet territories NATO, electrical grids, research groups, journalists critical of Russia and political parties, to name a few security services around the world have identified only a handful of people who are directly involved in either carrying out such attacks or providing the cyberweapons that were used.

This absence of reliable witnesses has left ample room for President Trump and others to raise doubts about whether Russia really was involved in the D.N.C. hack.

There is not now and never has been a single piece of technical evidence produced that connects the malware used in the D.N.C. attack to the G.R.U., F.S.B. or any agency of the Russian government, said Jeffrey Carr, the author of a book on cyberwarfare. The G.R.U. is Russias military intelligence agency, and the F.S.B. its federal security service.

United States intelligence agencies, however, have been unequivocal in pointing a finger at Russia.

Seeking a path out of this fog, cybersecurity researchers and Western law enforcement officers have turned to Ukraine, a country that Russia has used for years as a laboratory for a range of politicized operations that later cropped up elsewhere, including electoral hacking in the United States.

In several instances, certain types of computer intrusions, like the use of malware to knock out crucial infrastructure or to pilfer email messages later released to tilt public opinion, occurred in Ukraine first. Only later were the same techniques used in Western Europe and the United States.

So, not surprisingly, those studying cyberwar in Ukraine are now turning up clues in the investigation of the D.N.C. hack, including the discovery of a rare witness.

Security experts were initially left scratching their heads when the Department of Homeland Security on Dec. 29 released technical evidence of Russian hacking that seemed to point not to Russia, but rather to Ukraine.

In this initial report, the department released only one sample of malware said to be an indicator of Russian state-sponsored hacking, though outside experts said a variety of malicious programs were used in Russian electoral hacking.

The sample pointed to a malware program, called the P.A.S. web shell, a hacking tool advertised on Russian-language Dark Web forums and used by cybercriminals throughout the former Soviet Union. The author, Profexer, is a well-regarded technical expert among hackers, spoken about with awe and respect in Kiev.

He had made it available to download, free, from a website that asked only for donations, ranging from $3 to $250. The real money was made by selling customized versions and by guiding his hacker clients in its effective use. It remains unclear how extensively he interacted with the Russian hacking team.

After the Department of Homeland Security identified his creation, he quickly shut down his website and posted on a closed forum for hackers, called Exploit, that Im not interested in excessive attention to me personally.

Soon, a hint of panic appeared, and he posted a note saying that, six days on, he was still alive.

Another hacker, with the nickname Zloi Santa, or Bad Santa, suggested the Americans would certainly find him, and place him under arrest, perhaps during a layover at an airport.

It could be, or it could not be, it depends only on politics, Profexer responded. If U.S. law enforcement wants to take me down, they will not wait for me in some countrys airport. Relations between our countries are so tight I would be arrested in my kitchen, at the first request.

In fact, Serhiy Demediuk, chief of the Ukrainian Cyber Police, said in an interview that Profexer went to the authorities himself. As the cooperation began, Profexer went dark on hacker forums. He last posted online on Jan. 9. Mr. Demediuk said he had made the witness available to the F.B.I., which has posted a full-time cybersecurity expert in Kiev as one of four bureau agents stationed at the United States Embassy there. The F.B.I. declined to comment.

Profexer was not arrested because his activities fell in a legal gray zone, as an author but not a user of malware, the Ukrainian police say. But he did know the users, at least by their online handles. He told us he didnt create it to be used in the way it was, Mr. Demediuk said.

A member of Ukraines Parliament with close ties to the security services, Anton Gerashchenko, said that the interaction was online or by phone and that the Ukrainian programmer had been paid to write customized malware without knowing its purpose, only later learning it was used in the D.N.C. hack.

Mr. Gerashchenko described the author only in broad strokes, to protect his safety, as a young man from a provincial Ukrainian city. He confirmed that the author turned himself in to the police and was cooperating as a witness in the D.N.C. investigation. He was a freelancer and now he is a valuable witness, Mr. Gerashchenko said.

While it is not known what Profexer has told Ukrainian investigators and the F.B.I. about Russias hacking efforts, evidence emanating from Ukraine has again provided some of the clearest pictures yet about Fancy Bear, or Advanced Persistent Threat 28, which is run by the G.R.U.

Fancy Bear has been identified mostly by what it does, not by who does it. One of its recurring features has been the theft of emails and its close collaboration with the Russian state news media.

Tracking the bear to its lair, however, has so far proved impossible, not least because many experts believe that no such single place exists.

Even for a sophisticated tech company like Microsoft, singling out individuals in the digital miasma has proved just about impossible. To curtail the damage to clients operating systems, the company filed a complaint against Fancy Bear last year with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia but found itself boxing with shadows.

As Microsoft lawyers reported to the court, because defendants used fake contact information, anonymous Bitcoin and prepaid credit cards and false identities, and sophisticated technical means to conceal their identities, when setting up and using the relevant internet domains, defendants true identities remain unknown.

Nevertheless, Ukrainian officials, though wary of upsetting the Trump administration, have been quietly cooperating with American investigators to try to figure out who stands behind all the disguises.

Included in this sharing of information were copies of the server hard drives of Ukraines Central Election Commission, which were targeted during a presidential election in May 2014. That the F.B.I. had obtained evidence of this earlier, Russian-linked electoral hack has not been previously reported.

Traces of the same malicious code, this time a program called Sofacy, were seen in the 2014 attack in Ukraine and later in the D.N.C. intrusion in the United States.

Intriguingly, in the cyberattack during the Ukrainian election, what appears to have been a bungle by Channel 1, a Russian state television station, inadvertently implicated the government authorities in Moscow.

Hackers had loaded onto a Ukrainian election commission server a graphic mimicking the page for displaying results. This phony page showed a shocker of an outcome: an election win for a fiercely anti-Russian, ultraright candidate, Dmytro Yarosh. Mr. Yarosh in reality received less than 1 percent of the vote.

The false result would have played into a Russian propaganda narrative that Ukraine today is ruled by hard-right, even fascist, figures.

The fake image was programmed to display when polls closed, at 8 p.m., but a Ukrainian cybersecurity company, InfoSafe, discovered it just minutes earlier and unplugged the server.

State television in Russia nevertheless reported that Mr. Yarosh had won and broadcast the fake graphic, citing the election commissions website, even though the image had never appeared there. The hacker had clearly provided Channel 1 with the same image in advance, but the reporters had failed to check that the hack actually worked.

For me, this is an obvious link between the hackers and Russian officials, said Victor Zhora, director of InfoSafe, the cybersecurity company that first found the fake graphic.

A Ukrainian government researcher who studied the hack, Nikolai Koval, published his findings in a 2015 book, Cyberwar in Perspective, and identified the Sofacy malware on the server.

The mirror of the hard drive went to the F.B.I., which had this forensic sample when the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike identified the same malware two years later, on the D.N.C. servers.

It was the first strike, Mr. Zhora said of the earlier hack of Ukraines electoral computers. Ukraines Cyber Police have also provided the F.B.I. with copies of server hard drives showing the possible origins of some phishing emails targeting the Democratic Party during the election.

In 2016, two years after the election hack in Ukraine, hackers using some of the same techniques plundered the email system of the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, which had accused Russian athletes of systematic drug use.

That raid, too, seems to have been closely coordinated with Russian state television, which began airing well-prepared reports about WADAs hacked emails just minutes after they were made public. The emails appeared on a website that announced that WADA had been hacked by a group calling itself the Fancy Bears Hack Team.

It was the first time Fancy Bear had broken cover.

Fancy Bear remains extraordinarily elusive, however. To throw investigators off its scent, the group has undergone various makeovers, restocking its arsenal of malware and sometimes hiding under different guises. One of its alter egos, cyberexperts believe, is Cyber Berkut, an outfit supposedly set up in Ukraine by supporters of the countrys pro-Russian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, who was ousted in 2014.

After lying dormant for many months, Cyber Berkut jumped back into action this summer just as multiple investigations in Washington into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow shifted into high gear. Cyber Berkut released stolen emails that it and Russian state news media said had exposed the real story: Hillary Clinton had colluded with Ukraine.

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In Ukraine, a Malware Expert Who Could Blow the Whistle on Russian Hacking - New York Times